In this recent article… Bjørn Lomborg, an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, founded and directs the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, and is the editor of How Much have Global Problems Cost the World? just nails the Global Warming issues.
Some highlights:
Politicians "…promise that it is a challenge that they can meet at low cost, while improving the world in countless other ways."
Political heavyweights tell us "climate change “the greatest challenge of our generation.” and "If we fail to address it, … the costs will be “catastrophic.”
The 2006 Stern Report "famously valued the damage caused by global warming at 5-20% of GDP"
We've been told the cost to fight this "would amount to just 0.5%" to 1% of world GDP.
The president of the US, "promised that policies to combat global warming would create five million new green jobs."
"…global warming has dramatically slowed or entirely stopped in the last decade and a half" but the recent IPCC report did not highlight that fact and some countries wanted it to be removed from the IPCC report.
"The second IPCC installment showed that the temperature rise that we are expected to see sometime around 2055-2080 will create a net cost of 0.2-2% of GDP". Some politicians wanted this deleted as it didn't square with what they've been saying.
"The third installment of the IPCC report showed that strong climate policies would be more expensive than claimed as well – costing upwards of 4% of GDP in 2030, 6% in 2050, and 11% by 2100. And the real cost will likely be much higher, because these numbers assume smart policies, instantly enacted, with key technologies magically available."
"Again, politicians tried to delete or change references to these high costs. British officials explained that they wanted such cost estimates cut because they “would give a boost to those who doubt action is needed.”
"Green jobs have been created only with heavy subsidies, costing a similar number of jobs elsewhere."
"Climate change has been portrayed as a huge catastrophe costing as much as 20% of world GDP, though brave politicians could counter it at a cost of just 1% of GDP. The reality is just the opposite: We now know that the damage cost will be perhaps 2% of world GDP, whereas climate policies can end up costing more than 11% of GDP."
Lomborg further contends, and I am sympathetic to his view that:
"We live in a world where one in six deaths are caused by easily curable infectious diseases; one in eight deaths stem from air pollution, mostly from cooking indoors with dung and twigs; and billions of people live in abject poverty, with no electricity and little food. We ought never to have entertained the notion that the world’s greatest challenge could be to reduce temperature rises in our generation by a fraction of a degree."
"The solution is to stop applauding politicians who warn of catastrophe and promote poor policies. Instead of subsidizing inefficient solar and wind power with little benefit, we need to invest in long-term green innovation. And we need to give more attention to all of the other problems. This is perhaps less entertaining, but it will do much more good."
