Climate “Reparations” Numbers Are Rigged
What a lot of stupidity. Poor nations are poor because of their foolish economic policies, nothing else
Nobel Prize–winning economist Esther Duflo thinks rich countries should pay poor countries $500 billion in compensation each year for climate-change damages. It is our “moral debt.” She proposes an international 2-percent wealth tax on the ultra-rich and an increase in the global minimum corporate tax rate to fund this $500 billion transfer.
You and I may be shocked by such a suggestion but don’t worry: “It’s really necessary. And it’s reasonable. It’s not that hard.” Only someone in an elite, progressive bubble could say something like that. Let’s check her reasoning.
Duflo claims that climate change creates costs, specifically through “excess” deaths due to excessive heat. Poorer countries from the global south near the equator will see more days of extreme heat, and so will see a disproportionate increase in excess deaths.
Other economists translated those deaths into an externality cost of $37 per ton of CO2. Multiply that by the roughly fourteen billion tons of CO2 emitted by the US and Europe and voila, wealthy countries generate $500 billion in externality costs per year.
She proposes paying for this by increasing the global minimum corporate tax rate from 15 percent to 18 percent and introducing an international 2-percent wealth tax on the ultra-rich, which she defines as the 3000 richest billionaires. We can’t go into the many problems and obstacles to such funding mechanisms here — suffice it to say such ideas will be nearly impossible to implement.
But Duflo’s back-of-the-envelope calculations, besides missing the bigger picture, are so speculative as to require playing make-believe. Let’s play along for a moment to see why. We’ll start by reverse-engineering her $500 billion number into a measure of harm.
Regulatory agencies and insurance companies use the concepts of “statistical value of life” or the “statistical value of a life-year” to do cost-benefit analysis on risk and the monetary value of life. These concepts are slippery, however, and calculated in a variety of ways with a wide range of estimates.
To keep things simple, let’s assume that the value of one life-year is $200,000. The $500 billion number proposed by Duflo suggests that the cost imposed by wealthy countries burning fossil fuels is the loss of roughly 2.5 million life-year” in poor countries per year.
That sounds like a staggering number!
But what about the benefits that have accrued to developing countries from activities that generate CO2 emissions? Important advances in medicine, such as antibiotics and vaccines, were developed in modern industrialized countries. So, too, were refrigeration, cars, the internet, smart phones, radar; modern agricultural methods with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers; improvements in plumbing, building materials, manufacturing, and much more. “Polluting” activities in industrialized countries improved nutrition and safety around the world. These advances, and many others, significantly increased people’s life expectancies — especially in poor countries.
Surely the value of these improvements should weight the opposite side of the scale from the expected harm of climate change — especially since the crusade against fossil fuels and carbon emissions will assuredly slow economic growth and innovation. Let’s consider the case of India for a moment.
Life expectancy in India has basically doubled from about 35 years in 1950 to about 70 years in 2024. If you consider that India has just over a billion people living in it, modern technology developed by rich CO2-emitting countries has added 35 billion life-years in India alone.
Translating life-years back into dollars, 35 billion life-years times $200,000 per life-year means that the benefits from greater life expectancy in India over the past 75 years is the equivalent of $7 quadrillion dollars — or in annualized terms, an annual benefit of about $93 trillion dollars. In other words, the benefits to India alone are over a hundred times larger than Duflo’s estimate of costs!
Nor is India cherry-picked. China has a similar story with life expectancy rising from 43.45 years to 77.64 years. Similar improvements in life expectancy occur across the global south.
https://www.aier.org/article/climate-reparations-are-rigged/
*************************************************More US Youngsters Are Turning Away From Climate Alarmism
A recent Monmouth University poll highlights a decline in the American public’s sense of urgency about ‘climate change’, especially among younger adults
While 73 percent still believe ‘climate change’ is happening, only half now see it as a very serious problem.
This decline is most pronounced among the younger demographic, with only 50 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds viewing it as a very serious issue, down from 67 percent in 2021.
This shift could show a growing skepticism and a reprioritization of immediate concerns such as economic pressures.
The poll also notes a decrease in support for government action on ‘climate change’, with 59 percent in favor of more federal intervention, a drop from past years.
This waning support coincides with a diminished perception of ‘climate change’ as an urgent crisis.
Given the evolution of climate science, it’s critical to distinguish between substantive metrics and those used primarily to push a narrative of impending catastrophe.
For instance, while metrics like the Earth Energy Imbalance and various climate indices are valuable for understanding changes in the climate system, they come with significant uncertainties.
These uncertainties often overlap with the claimed magnitude of the changes, which could lead to overestimations of the impact.
Furthermore, the narrative that supports drastic climate action often overlooks the substantial improvements in human resilience to climate-related disasters over the past century.
Despite a significant increase in global population and industrial activity, the proportion of climate-related deaths has decreased dramatically, indicating enhanced adaptability and mitigation capabilities.
The data presented below provides a compelling backdrop to the recent Monmouth University poll findings regarding ‘climate change’ urgency.
The infographic highlights that there has been no significant increase in the number of hydrological, meteorological, and climatological disasters since 2000, no substantial rise in deaths from these disasters, and no significant uptick in their economic cost as a percentage of global GDP.
This stable trend suggests that the decrease in perceived urgency and importance among the American public, especially younger adults, may be influenced by an observable lack of escalation in the direct impacts of climate change.
Such data can lead to skepticism or reduced concern, aligning with the poll’s finding that fewer people now see ‘climate change’ as a very serious problem. This reinforces the view that while ‘climate change’ is acknowledged, the catastrophic consequences often highlighted in media and political rhetoric may not resonate with the empirical evidence observed over the past two decades.
When placed in the broader context, this polling data suggests a possible realignment of public opinion towards a more measured and data-driven approach to climate policy.
It highlights the importance of focusing on direct human and economic impacts rather than abstract indices that may not reliably indicate imminent disaster.
As public sentiment shifts, it might be time to reassess how we discuss and prioritize ‘climate change’ in policy debates, ensuring that actions are proportionate to the actual, measurable impacts rather than driven by alarmist narratives.
https://principia-scientific.com/more-us-youngsters-are-turning-away-from-climate-alarmism/
************************************************Those Endangered Polar Bears That Are Still Thriving
Polar bears have been very disappointing to Warmists. Odd that we now hear little about them. They are refusing to vanish
Remember the polar bears? Those cute, cuddly, incredibly dangerous apex predator icons of the climate emergency that once roamed the frozen wastes of the far north until climate change wiped them all out?
Well, in the late 1960s there were an estimated 12,000 polar bears spread out around the Arctic.
But with disappearing sea ice causing the bears not to be able to feed in the spring and summer, numbers have plunged to… 32,000. Whoa, wait a minute there….
In her report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, zoologist and polar bear expert Susan Crockford points out that the “official” estimate from the Polar Bear Study Group is 26,000, but it was last produced in 2015 and hasn’t been updated since then.
Perhaps they fear good news… and if so rightly because new regional surveys since 2015 have added thousands to the estimated sub-populations and by her reckoning the current population is likely around 32,000.
Note that among its other virtues, Crockford’s paper shows error bars rather than implying more certainty than is justified.
But even if the actual number is less than 32,000, and of course it could also be more, Crockford points out that back in 2007 the US Geological Survey forecast the polar bear population would fall by two-thirds to about 7,500 by now, due to disappearing sea ice, due to you wanting to fly to your holiday destination.
It was a spectacularly wrong forecast which at the time inspired a now-apparently defunct activist group called Plane Stupid to make a plain stupid video showing polar bears falling from the sky to their deaths on a city street below as a “J’accuse” against selfish polar bear killers who travel by ‘fossil fuel’-powered jets.
But if ‘climate change’ is what drives polar bear population change then hurray for ‘climate change’ because the polar bear numbers are not #Gettingworse, they’re getting better.
https://principia-scientific.com/those-endangered-polar-bears-that-are-still-thriving/
************************************************Australia: Victoria stil refusing to develop much needed gas
Energy minister Chris Bowen deserves high praise for telling Australia the politically incorrect truth – that we need gas to support our accelerated roll out of renewables.
It could not have been easy for Bowen to tell the truth because it contradicted his previous statements and the “we need gas” truth does not accord with the view of many in the cabinet and the ALP supporter base.
As my regular readers know, over the years Bowen and I have often had different views. In Australia, it is rare for a minister to reverse previous statements.
Accordingly, Bowen rises dramatically in my estimation, and the nation could do with more federal and state ministers with that sort of courage.
Australia’s new gas policy means both the government and opposition have similar gas policies, and that suddenly puts Victoria in a position where it is holding the east coast of Australia to ransom by stopping development of its immense low cost onshore no fracking gas reserves.
Fascinatingly, the last time Victoria held the nation to ransom over gas was in the 1960s, soon after gas was discovered in Bass Strait. The then Premier, the late Henry Bolte, wanted to keep the gas for Victorians and to use cheap, reliable energy to boost industry in the state.
It worked and Victoria got a great boost, but eventually the gas was shared with NSW and other states, and we have an east coast pipeline grid.
It is time for Canberra to get much tougher with the delinquent Victorian state, which keeps crying poor when it in fact is not using its enormous riches.
If Victorians wants higher unreliable energy prices, I guess that’s their business, but there is no reason why the existing pipelines should not be used to send Victorian gas to NSW and Queensland who understand the value of gas to lower emissions while keeping reliable energy prices low.
Victoria can encourage its industry and people to follow its energy and go north.
Meanwhile, Victoria can still benefit from is the remarkable attributes of its gas, which is dissolved in deep water. In Queensland, the water that is produced with gas is not suitable to grow crops but the water that contains Victoria’s gas needs very little if any treatment to be used to grow carbon absorbing plants and to revolutionise parts of Victoria’s agriculture, including making it drought proof.
Bowen’s current energy policy still insists that nuclear is too expensive. It is certainly a lot more expensive than a Latrobe Valley gas fired power from the incredibly low-cost Victorian gas. But BHP has shown that Canadian nuclear power is much cheaper than current Australian power costs. .
By using Victoria’s low carbon gas not only can we remove coal from the power equation but suddenly by not rushing nuclear we can watch a nuclear revolution taking place that is led by China.
The world’s second-largest economy now operates nuclear submarines using molten salt cooled thorium, and the same fuel is being used in container ships and also new power stations. It looks to be the future if nuclear, so it makes sense to wait.
My regular readers know the detail of Victorian gas and the fact that former Premier Daniel Andrews gave a carefully selected committee $42m with the instruction to look for gas on shore in Victoria, but that instruction carried a strict caveat – they were forbidden to look where one of the world’s leading gas reserve estimators, MHA Petroleum Consultants, (now part of the giant Sproule group) had calculated Victoria gas reserves totalled 4.996 trillion cubic feet of gas.
That’s some 60 per cent of the last 50 years of Bass Strait production. Better still there was a “high” estimate of reserves at 12.6234 TCF which would make the Victorian reserves second only to the North West Shelf. Lakes Oil also has onshore gas, and its reserves were also in forbidden territory.
The Andrews Committee pocketed the money and dutifully reported Victoria has no on shore gas. Publication of the MHA calculated reserves was removed from government web sites.
The gas was first discovered when Victorian brown coal fields were being mapped in the decades leading up to the 1950s. Decades later, with Bass Strait running down, Exxon in Houston began researching this very deep gas that is dissolved in water and sent the data to MHA.
The first proposal to develop the gas included Esso and BlueScope in the consortium and was put to the then Coalition Premier Denis Napthine in 2014. Napthine incorrectly thought it involved fracking and would hurt farmers, so rejected it prior to the election he lost.
That first proposal emphasised that further wells (about six) must be drilled to make sure that production and permeability will duplicate the first test wells. But Exxon were so confident that they planned to spend $200m (in 2014) on the project, arranged for BlueScope and other major gas users to pencil intent contracts and signed six agreements with local landholders who would benefit from the development.
In the decade that followed Andrews and his energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio, must have known that fracking was not required and because the gas was on the national pipeline and next to the Exxon treatment plant the costs were very low. As a result, they had to be able to deny its existence to keep green seats.
To get Victoria to comply with national policy may require punishment. And also required, is a local media that is not engulfed by Victorian government propaganda.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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