I thought this op-ed in the WSJ was excellent. I definitely recommend reading the whole thing here.
A couple of excerpts.
Climate scientists failed to anticipate the absence of warming in the last decade, a point that Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, privately conceded in one of the disclosed emails was a “travesty.”
The public also has a right to wonder whether the bulk of the scarce financial resources available to mitigate ecological risks ought to be devoted primarily to climate change rather than to other threats to the environment and public health. For several years, Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg has been convening meetings in Copenhagen of some of the world’s leading economists to consider that very question. Overwhelmingly they have concluded that the world’s dollars, euros and yen are better spent on tackling diseases such as AIDS or malaria or problems such as malnutrition and run-of-the-mill pollution than on hugely expensive (and dubiously effective) carbon-mitigation schemes.
Given the choice between spending $100 to feed a hungry child in the present or combat a notional climate problem that might or might not have real consequences a century hence, most of us would surely choose the former.
Much of the momentum for Copenhagen is now driven by the alternative fuels industry and its investors, who stand to lose vast sums unless governments artificially raise the price of carbon. These include our friends at Kleiner Perkins, the ecoventure capital fund that includes Al Gore as a partner.
Last 3 posts by Taylor
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I agree. Let’s assume that global warming and its consequences are 100% true. Then yes, it is a big problem. But there are other problems that are just as big. And these other problems, like disease and peak oil, have so much more scientific consensus than global warming. So I think it’s better to put resources into something that is just as big of a problem as global warming, but that has better data to support.
I thought the Op-ed was interesting, but to be honest, I find these types of articles disingenuous for the following reasons:
1. He tries to make this a mutual exclusivity issue. Yes, you cannot spend $100 on a starving child if you’ve spent it elsewhere. BUT we don’t spend $100, we spend billions and some of it goes to help feed the citizens of starving nations and some of it goes to deal with environmental issues. Therefore, it would have been more fair for him to argue that he has a problem with us spending $35 on starving children and $65 on global warming.
2. He tries to make this a priority issue, but doesn’t fully commit. If starving children are so high on his priority list, why doesn’t he argue that 100% of all global warming funds should be transferred to combat this. Why doesn’t he argue that 100% of all federal programs with lower priority should be shut down to fund third-world programs? Obviously, he isn’t going to take it that far, but he makes the argument, not me.
The point I’m trying to make is that there is a balance that i feel these articles attempt to ignore in order to get an emotional reaction. He might as well argue that we are all supporters of cap and trade because we put our dollars toward gasoline (which causes the problems cap and trade is supposed to solve) instead of the poor child.