The costs of “global warming” [update 5]

While the politicians debate how much they will be strangling industry in the name of global warming, economists are pointing out the cost to this country of that strangling, and Australasian scientists are “confirming what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”

In fact, nature not man is responsible for recent global warming, says the scientific report by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland, John McLean of Melbourne, and Bob Carter of James Cook University – and the climate models that say we are responsible are irretrievably flawed.

The two-year study published in last week's American Geophysical Union's Journal of Geophysical Research by Auckland University climate scientist Chris de Freitas, academic Bob Carter, of James Cook University, Townsville, and Melbourne scientist John McLean concludes that in the past 50 years the average global temperature in the lowest layer of the atmosphere has risen and fallen in agreement with El Nino or La Nina conditions, and not because of increasing greenhouse-gas levels.

The key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures is overwhelmingly the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, they say, yet the the El Niño-Southern Oscillation effect has never been successfully modelled -- “it's no wonder that model outputs have been so inaccurate,” they say. 

We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis. . .

So if the globe isn’t warming any more (as even warmist climate scientists now concede), if we weren’t causing the previous warming (as Carter, McLean and De Freitas point out), and if the models are irretrievably flawed and can’t be relied on to predict future warming anyway (as they also report), then why the hell are we about to be handed a bill that looks likely to cost every family of five $7,000 a year “in new fees, taxes and higher prices”?

You’ll have to ask Nick Smith, who while wriggling on National’s election promise of a 50% cut by 2050, is still promising to whack New Zealanders with a bill that’s both unaffordable and unnecessary.

There certainly are costs to global warming – and that cost is government action to strangle private action.

UPDATE 1: Another one from the If-This-is-Global-Warming-I’d-Hate-to-See-Global-Cooling file: 3,000 Low Temp US Records Set This July! [hat tip Fred Gibson].

UPDATE 2: Advice for Nick Smith et al from Professor Richard S Lindzen, in Quadrant magazine [hat tip NZ Climate Science Coalition]:

“For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, for more serious leaders, the need to courageously resist hysteria is clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence."

UPDATE 3: Jeff Perren gives the answer if you’re still scratching your head. Let me quote his answer in full since it’s something you need to get you head around:

    Q: "Why the hell are we about to be handed a bill that looks likely to cost every family of five $7,000 a year 'in new fees, taxes and higher prices'?"
    A: For the same reason they would push it if it actually saved every family of five $7,000 a year. Because it's absolutely vital to chain the producers.
    The push against 'CO2 polluters' is just one major battle in the overall war against choice, for anyone who doesn't willingly accept servitude. The push to regulate even further the financial industry is just one more. As is the health care push, as is...
    Progressives, like the Puritans from which they descended, simply can not tolerate individuals living as they please, without the Progressives directing them. They invent all sorts of rationalizations, pretending bad things inevitably follow from freedom, in order to justify their fear and hatred of choice. No amount of evidence showing how unfounded are their beliefs will dissuade them, as it never does for the truly religious.
    And if their latest chicken-little rationalization fails, they'll invent a new one.

If you don’t believe him, read ’The Toxicity of Environmentalism’ by George Reisman – still on point twenty years after he wrote it.

UPDATE 4: The proposed emissions trading scheme is “criminally absurd” says Doc McGrath.

    Speaking from Masterton, where overnight temperatures were expected to dip to three degrees below zero, Libertarianz leader Richard McGrath called on the government to cancel any plans for carbon taxes and emissions trading.
    “Three prominent Australasian climate scientists published research last week showing that with the El Nino effect taken into account, CO2 emissions have a negligible influence on global temperature. Therefore, as Professor Bob Carter points out, emissions trading will exert no measurable effect on climate.”
    “The Libertarianz Party calls on the government to abandon plans to penalise industrial output, as we are certain this would lead to a serious drop in living standards for New Zealanders, with unnecessary suffering and death.”  
    “The effect of human activity on climate change is a scientific question, which has been used as a political football.  Libertarianz asserts that the most efficient way to adapt to any climate change - be it human or natural - is with freedom, reason and free market investment, not suicidally unachievable government controls and taxes."
    "It would be criminally absurd for the government to proceed any further with plans to set up any sort of emissions trading scheme.”

He’s right, you know.

UPDATE 5: More on those models: Lubos compares reality with eleven prominent climate models and, guess which is the odd one out.  And you’ll never guess what that means for the reality of warmists’ predictions.