The Tenth International Conference on Climate Change’s ninth panel, “Human Welfare, Energy, and Policies,” featured panelists S. Fred Singer, Craig D Idso, Lord Christopher Monckton, and Robert M. Carter.
Singer, chairman of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, provided a message of hope regarding the mild 20th century warming.
“Warming is not serious,” Singer said. “We can stand warming. Ice ages are serious. Major ones come every 100,000 years, controlled by astronomical factors. Not much we can do about those. And there are little ice ages, and they come about every 1,000–1,500 years. The major ice ages nearly wiped out humanity, at least they nearly did in Europe. … They wiped out the Neanderthals.”
‘Deeply Flawed’ Government Claims
Craig Idso, chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, says the 2010 and 2013 benefit-cost estimates of the Federal Interagency Working Group (FIWG) concerning carbon dioxide reduction policies “are deeply flawed.”
Idso said, “[They] in no way … reflect the economic reality of a properly conducted climate change [benefit-costs analysis].”
“When certain errors and omissions in the [FIWG’s] methodology and calculations are rectified, the projected benefits of ‘carbon’ are found to far outweigh their projected costs,” said Idso.
“No attempt was made by [FIWG] to calculate or even acknowledge the existence of multiple, well-established ‘carbon’ benefits,” said Idso. “In order to be valid, a benefit-cost analysis must examine and include not only the costs but any benefits as well. Such negligence and prejudicial imbalance is stunning. It is inexcusable. It is scientifically fraudulent. And it is borderline criminal.”
Hypocrisy, Hubris, and Harms
Monckton told the audience, “The nastiest consequence of the ‘global warming scam’ … is not the further enrichment of the rich; it is the further impoverishment and oppression of the poor.” Monkton says this is especially true in Africa, where the population has very little access to electric power.
“We say [Africans] can’t have the coal-fired power that we have had, because it will destroy the planet, even though … it won’t,” Monckton said.
Carter, previously a professor at James Cook University, says the climate change debate is not really about science or economics.
“The problem is not any longer a scientific [one],” Carter said. “[It] is hubris and moral vanity amongst society’s leadership and especially amongst what we might call the Left Liberal Set.”
D. Brady Nelson ([email protected]) is a columnist with Townhall.
Darren Brady Nelson is an Austrian school economist who serves as the chief economist at LibertyWorks and as an associate scholar with the Center for Freedom and Prosperity. Nelson is also a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute.
