The cost of global warming

Here's a question I'm sure you've been wondering about. How much has been spent on global warming research since it became political in 1990? The answer for the US gives a clue to the scale of this particular gravy train: according to Harlen Watson (Senior Climate Negotiator and Special Representative, U.S. Department of State), the amount spent on the US Global Change Research Program from 1990 to 2004 was a whopping US$23 billion*.

$23 billion!

At the current rate of spending of over $3 billion per year, that's going to hit the US$30 billion mark very, very soon. No wonder there's so much consensus.

So global warming is already imposing a huge cost on human activity, and not just a monetary cost. There is already a cost from regulation. We've seen before that a cost is already being imposed on owners of coastal land, for example, who are being forbidden from building for fear (by council planners) of sea level rises. [See this recent example in Rodney District, just overturned by the Environment Court.]

And there is a chilling cost for free speech as well. Even as proposals from the Clark Government to remove charitable status from organisations critical of the Government reverberate around New Zealand, columnists overseas are beginning to call for "climate change denial" to be outlawed in the same way as Holocaust denial. "Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence," says one. "It is a crime against humanity, after all."

Such is the chilling effect of politicising speech with bagsful of taxpayers' money.

[* Figure given in this interview]

UPDATE 1: News today that botanist David Bellamy (left) has joined NZ's Climate Science Coalition: "People around the world are being bombarded with reports of potentially disastrous effects of man-made global warming, said internationally famous botanist and environmental campaigner, Professor David Bellamy, in announcing in England that he has joined the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition to help set public fears at rest." See... Bellamy Joins NZ Climate Science Coalition at Scoop, who link to a report in the Grauniad of a blunder by Bellamy that is now held up every time his name is mentioned.

UPDATE 2: Meanwhile, news that you won't be seeing on Campbell Live (or in IPCC reports):

A team at the Danish National Space Center has discovered how cosmic rays from exploding stars can help to make clouds in the atmosphere. The results support the theory that cosmic rays influence Earth's climate.

See Exploding Stars Influence Climate of Earth - Space Daily. Junk Science has more detail, and some nifty animations: Cosmic Rays and Earth's Climate
Describing the effect of this research, Junk Science argues,

this new work is a severe blow to proponents of the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis and advocates of Anthropogenic Global Warming who have worked so hard to deny solar influence on global climate.

LINKS: An overview of US global climate change policy - Briefing, US Dept of State
Oregon Petition - Wikipedia
List of scientists opposing global warming consensus - Wikipedia
Global warming: the chilling effect on free speech - Spiked
Seaside houses falsely tagged as flood risk - NZ Herald

RELATED: Science, Politics-US, Global Warming