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Timmy elsewhere

At the ASI.

Changes in the IPCC’s estimations of the cost of preventing climate change might actually mean that we shouldn’t try to prevent it.

11 thoughts on “Timmy elsewhere”

  1. A couple of degrees on average seems a small price to pay for the increased food production more CO2 will bring.

  2. As humans do rather well in warm periods eg Minoan, roman and Medieval WPs and find prolonged cold nasty with famine, plagues and wars; also as there has been a cooling trend longterm since the Holocene Optimum 8000 years ago and shortterm since 2000, perhaps those nice bureaucrats could preserve their jobs and pensions by encouraging the use of more combustibles.

  3. Actually, Timmy, you can rest easy with your carbon taxes. The IPCC’s 12% is just as notional as Stern’s 20%.

  4. With the sun going into a quiet period we’re heading for a new Maunder minimum. Look forward to the Thames being locked with ice in future years. We need more global warming to counter it. This is something the climate scientists haven’t thought of or modelled. Just shows that you can’t predict the future and even thinking you can highlights the stupidity of greenie scientists.

  5. Personally, I’m still having trouble with the idea; giving governments money reduces temperatures.
    The idea; giving me money increases global crop yields is so obvious, of course, it doesn’t merit discussion

  6. SBML>

    I thought everyone knew that the Thames used to freeze much more readily because of the damming effect of the old London Bridge.

  7. Your realist strategy wont work, this tactic was explored in The Skeptical Environmentalist over a decade ago and was viciously put down by the Green lobby, they’ve continued ever since, the concept of actually accepting AGW as a small price to pay for the benefits it brings is not considered up for discussion. The Green movement is almost religious in it’s thinking, with the infallible dogma that humans who “wreck” the environment for their own benefit is not seen as a good thing and never will be, nothing can be acceptable other than to prevent change.

    AGW is just too good a political golden goose to kill, the primary culprit of CO2 linking to the industrialised western nations of capitalists, the mantra we must all work together for the good of the Earth is a powerful rhetoric for socialists and anti-individualist religions, the regulation it entails is a carte blanche to put us all under constant surveillance that makes anti-terrorist legislation look tame is a totalitarian’s wet dream. In short, it is not the economic equations we need to overcome but a broad political desire, the same fight in a different guise.

  8. The damming effect of the old London Bridge probably did influence the likelihood of the Thames freezing upstream of it, but records indicate that the Thames is capable of freezing without the help of the old London Bridge.

    Thomas Tegg records heavy frosts in Europe, including 1434 when the River Thames in London froze over “below bridge [London Bridge] to Gravesend”

    And from the same link:

    This yere in Decembre was the Thamis of London all frozen ouer, wherefore the kyges Maiestie with his beautifull spouse quene Jane, roade throughout the citie of London to Grenewich.

    (Just look at what texting was doing to spelling even way back then)

    The old bridge had been gone over 60 years by the time ice choked the Thames in 1895.

    If the Thames does freeze over, there will certainly be those who blame it on AGW, but it will really be the last hurrah of a dying cause.

  9. These moving guesstimates of externalities suggest that we really shouldn’t be talking of Pigovian taxes. We could put companies out of business and people out of work, only to come back a few years down the line to say “sorry, old chaps, the tax rates should have been negligible (if not zero) but never mind, eh.”

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