Global Warming Has Ended – The Next Climate Change to A Pronounced Cold Era Has Begun

In a news conference held in Orlando, Florida today, Mr. John L. Casey, Director of the Space and Science Research Center, issued a landmark declaration on climate change. (link)

“After an exhaustive review of a substantial body of climate research, and in conjunction with the obvious and compelling new evidence that exists, it is time that the world community acknowledges that the Earth has begun its next climate change. In an opinion echoed by many scientists around the world, the Space and Science Research Center (SSRC), today declares that the world’s climate warming of the past decades has now come to an end. A new climate era has already started that is bringing predominantly colder global temperatures for many years into the future. In some years this new climate will create dangerously cold weather with significant ill-effects world wide. Global warming is over – a new cold climate has begun.”

The Great Global Warming Dilemma: "Cap and Trade" vs. "Carbon Taxes"

How to eliminate carbon dioxide from atmosphere?

What a childish government's hobby to think about that! But seriously: if the governments want to do it, they would have to look at economic arguments. Two of light economic analysis of the "great global warming dilemma" offer Stephen Gordon and John Whitehead.

Stephen Gordon at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative (link):

What distinguishes the two is what happens to π - the difference between the price the consumers pay at B and what it costs suppliers to produce at Q₁. In the case of the carbon tax, the money goes to the government. But if output is capped at Q₁, that difference is pure profit: a permit to produce one unit of output allows its owner to collect a rent equal to to the difference between the selling price and the cost of production. If permits are traded, their price will be bid up so that their price will be equal to π. So where that money goes depends on how the permits are allocated in the first place. If the permits are simply given to existing emitters, then those profits are pocketed by the firms. If the permits are auctioned off, the price will be bid up to π, and the government gets the money.

John Whitehead at Environmental Economics (link):

In terms of the market failure, the negative carbon externality, both a carbon tax and carbon cap-and-trade will achieve the same level of increased efficiency by achieving the optimal abatement level at the minimum cost. The only difference is the distributional implications. The cost to the firm is lower for carbon cap-and-trade. The government receives tax revenue with a carbon tax. Both policies are preferred over techological or output standards (i.e., command and control regulation).

Australian Researchers Say: Gobal Cooling, Not Warming

Australian researchers are not convenient scientists: they assume global cooling!

By Michael Asher, DailyTech.com (link)
A new paper published by the Astronomical Society of Australia is warning of upcoming global cooling due to lessened solar activity. The study, written by three Australian researchers, has identified what is known as a "spin-orbit coupling" affecting the rotation rate of the sun. That rotation, in turn, is linked to the intensity of the solar cycle and climate changes here on Earth.
The study's lead author, Ian Wilson, explains further,

"[The paper] supports the contention that the level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in the next decade and remain low for about 20 - 30 years."

Global warming is sick-souled religion

By Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal (link)

Amount of scientists who belive in man-made global warming theory is shrinking. "NASA confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954."

But what is most considerable, Climate Alarmism spreads as a new ideological branch of socialism. And it is become a new religion.

Read article by Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal, (link)

The Greenest (Stupid) Show on Earth: Democratic National Convention

By Stephanie Simon, The Wall Street Journal (link)
The Great Democratic Final in green coat. Excellent paper on democratic green machinery.

Convention organizers hired the first-ever Director of Greening, longtime environmental activist Andrea Robinson. Her response to the mayor's challenge: "That terrifies me!"
After all, the last time Democrats met in Denver -- to nominate William Jennings Bryan in 1908 -- they dispatched horse-drawn wagons to bring snow from the Rocky Mountains to cool the meeting hall. Ms. Robinson suspected modern-day delegates would prefer air conditioning. So she quickly modified the mayor's goal: She'd supervise "the most sustainable political convention in modern American history."

Common Agricultural Policy: A wonderful world of social democracy

By Radovan Kazda, blog.sme.sk (link in slovak)

Who is the enemy of european farmers? Marginal right political parties or Emanuel Goldstein? European Commission will explain it to you. And the deliquent is: free market.
Let me quote what Commission means about free market in agriculture:

It is certainly not the time to abolish the CAP, as some have suggested. The market has a very important role to play, but left to itself, it will not care for our landscapes or respond to other public demands. And if we strip farming of all defences against occasional crises, we gamble with our food supply.

Read Press Release MEMO/08/422, June 20, 2008 (link).

Conservative view on carbon taxes - debate

Jim Manzi, TheAmericanScene.com (link)
Reactions:
- Ryan Avent at gristmill.grist.org (link)
- Daniel Hall at CommonTragedies.wordpress.com (link)

Ronald Coase on Pigovian Taxes

Jim Manzi, TheAmericanScene.com (link)

Ronald Coase’s lecture upon receiving the Nobel Prize in economics is very instructive. When discussing one of the two papers for which he won the award, The Problem of Social Cost, he had this to say:

I was exposing the weaknesses of Pigou’s analysis of the divergence between private and social products, an analysis generally accepted by economists, and that was all. … Pigou’s conclusion and that of most economists using standard economic theory was, and perhaps still is, that some kind of government action (usually the imposition of taxes) was required to restrain those whose actions had harmful effects on others, often termed negative externalities. What I showed in that article, as I thought, was that in a regime of zero transaction costs, an assumption of standard economic theory, negotiations between the parties would lead to those arrangements being made which would maximise wealth and this irrespective of the initial assignment of rights. … I tend to regard the Coase Theorem as a stepping stone on the way to an analysis of an economy with positive transaction costs. The significance to me of the Coase Theorem is that it undermines the Pigovian system. Since standard economic theory assumes transaction costs to be zero, the Coase Theorem demonstrates that the Pigovian solutions are unnecessary in these circumstances. Of course, it does not imply, when transaction costs are positive, that government actions (such as government operation, regulation or taxation, including subsidies) could not produce a better result than relying on negotiations between individuals in the market. Whether this would be so could be discovered not by studying imaginary governments but what real governments actually do. My conclusion; let us study the world of positive transaction costs.

The Waste of Nations

By Gordon Hector, Adam Smith Institute, AdamSmith.org (link)
How to recycle with Pay–as–you–throw (PAYT) systems?
© Adam Smith Research Trust 2007 ; Published in the UK by ASI (Research) Ltd.

Global Warming Economics - Facts vs. Myths

By Iain Murray, Competitive Enterprise Institute, cei.org (link)
Did you know that i) signatories to the Kyoto Protocol are not meeting their emissions reductions targets, ii) temperatures does not rise in tandem with greenhouse gas concentrations, iii) the costs of global warming policies can be feasibly borne, and may even pay for themselves in the long run, and iv) experience shows that cap-and-trade schemes can achieve good environmental outcomes by harnessing market incentives? A new study debunking myths over global warming.

Global warming is a dangerous religion

By John Brignell, numberwatch.co.uk, (link)
Global Warming has become the core belief in a new eco-theology. The term is used as shorthand for anthropogenic (or man made) global warming. It is closely related to other modern belief systems, such as political correctness, chemophobia and various other forms of scaremongering, but it represents the vanguard in the assault on scientific man. The activists now prefer to call it “climate change”.
This gives them two advantages: It allows them to seize as “evidence” the inevitable occurrences of unusually cold weather as well as warm ones; the climate is always changing, so they must be right.

Time to recycle recycling?

By Iain Murray, The Washington Times, washtimes.com (link)
Many of the other features of traditional environmentalism are actually at odds with global warming. Nuclear power is perhaps the best source of low carbon electricity. Genetically modified organisms can dramatically lower the energy needed to grow crops. And in fact, striking at the base of institutionalized environmentalism, it appears recycling can produce more carbon than new manufacture.

Al Gore and many other environmentalists may not appreciate is that recycling paper is actually a carbon positive process.

Environmental Myths Harm Our Planet

By Hans Bader, OpenMarket.org (link)
Locally-grown and produced food isn’t necessarily better for the environment, or more economical for society, than food produced elsewhere. It often costs more and results in more soil erosion and greenhouse gas emissions. It’s better for the environment for an Englishman to eat lamb raised in New Zealand than lamb raised in England.

Environmentalists Take Advantage of Natural Disaster - Blame Midwest Floods on Global Warming

By Joseph D’Aleo, Icecap.us (link)

In the latest in a series of predictable news stories gobbled up by an all too willing media, an environmental group Clean Wisconsin today claimed that the disastrous floods that ravaged southern Wisconsin this week are consistent with global warming predictions in the January 2007 Clean Wisconsin report. The report, “Global Warming Arrives in Wisconsin,” forecast that global warming would lead to increased instances of severe droughts, more intense floods and increased snowfall.

Carbon: Tax, Trade, or Deregulate?

Lynne Kiesling, Ronald Bailey and Fred L. Smith debate on climate policy, Reason.com (link)

"From an economic perspective, the problem of climate change is twofold. First, there are incomplete and uncertain property rights in the air. It’s ludicrous to imagine us each walking around with a bubble over our heads so that we can only breathe and use the privatized air sphere around us. Second, there’s a large number of affected parties. In the limit, some would argue the entire planet is affected."

In praise of carbon dioxide

By Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post Comment (link).
With less heat and less carbon dioxide, the planet could become less hospitable and less green.

It's the food, stupid

By Ezra Klein, The American Prospect, prospect.org (link)
The average American household burns through about 8.1 metric tons of greenhouse gases as a result of food consumption. By contrast, if your house has a car that gets 25 mpg and you drive 12,000 miles a year, that produces 4.4 metric tons of greenhouse gases.

Carbon Taxes vs Cap-and-Trade

By Mark Thoma, Economist's View (link)
"A review of the equivalence of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade."

Vaclav Klaus: From Communism to environmentalism

By NP Editor, Financial Post, NationalPost.com (link)
Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, presented his book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles, to the National Press Club in Washington this past Tuesday.
"I spent most of my life under the communist regime which ignored and brutally violated human freedom and wanted to command not only the people but also the nature. To command “wind and rain” is one of the famous slogans I remember from my childhood. This experience taught me that freedom and rational dealing with the environment are indivisible. It formed my relatively sharp views on the fragility and vulnerability of free society and gave me a special sensitivity to all kinds of factors which may endanger it."

Common agricultural policy: CAP it all

By David Cronin, guardian.co.uk (link)
Two markedly different messages have been delivered by the European Commission over the past few days. Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, stated that "we are going to have to make radical changes in our agricultural policies and practices" to tackle climate change. Yet less than 24 hours earlier his colleague, Mariann Fischer Boel, who holds the agriculture portfolio, announced (pdf) plans that could make Europe's system of farming even more ecologically destructive than it now is.