Via The Bishop there\’s a new set of socio-economic models underlying the climate change models. I\’m sure this will provide hours of fun for everyone.
![\"\"](\"https://www.timworstall.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/10584_2011_148_Fig2_HTML.gif\" "\\"10584_2011_148_Fig2_HTML\\"")
The light green line is the one that produces the least climate change. We get to 490 ppm CO2-e and then it declines.
The dark blue one is the Armageddon one: 1370 ppm.
Note that we have more economic growth in the \”there\’s no disaster, we missed it!\” one than there is in the \”shit we\’re all dead\” one.
Which is interesting, don\’t you think? Economic growth is the way out of this, not the cause of it?
Which rather stuffs the rhetoric of various greenies…….
Indeed, from eyeballing, it seems that an economy 6 times the size in 2100 of the economy we had in 2000, ie, around and about the same level of economic growth in the 20th century, is part of dodging the bullet.
Ain\’t that interesting?
post hoc ergo propter hoc….
Not sure if this is ‘economic growth is the way out of this’ so much as ‘if we get out of this and don’t cause trillions of dollars of destruction will we do better on economic growth’. The latter surely being equivalent to saying ‘the sky is blue’ or maybe ‘if we paint something blue it will be blue’.
I actually think climate change is to blame for the riots. On the premise that the majority of looters don’t pay any taxes, the cost (as opposed to the benefit) of the welfare state largely passes them by. Now of course the cost of windfarms, while utter nonsense, is being levied like a poll tax. Everybody pays for once, not just the poor mugs on PAYE. And they don’t like it.
I wonder if the models are based on windmill manufactures research or now included the less alarmist NASA research.
“… less alarmist NASA research”
Har.
The sky is not falling. The earth is not warming.
Tim, your avoidance of the facts here is really quite eccentric.
Given that the most positive models forecast a massive role for CCS, I can assure you there’s no ‘windmill manufactures’ research at work here.
“Tim, your avoidance of the facts here is really quite eccentric.”
People continually criticize Tim for refusing to denounce AGW, and never seem to realise that if he did so, there would be no point in his looking at and highlighting the problems in the economic side of the debate.
Whether he truly believes AGW is a problem is irrelevant. He accepts it is for the purposes of moving on to the economic argument, which is his preferred field of combat.
What is the dark blue Armageddon line compared to the best scenario? Higher or lower growth? More or less globalisation?
“Whether he truly believes AGW is a problem is irrelevant. He accepts it is for the purposes of moving on to the economic argument, which is his preferred field of combat.”
I have always respected Tim because he admits the science of climate change is beyond his ken, and he’s not daft enough to dispute or take positions on stuff he doesn’t really understand, and where he really isn’t able to engage in expert conversation.
His economic insight is clear and powerful, and he knows his stuff (and makes his case) much better than the usual tripe we are fed by no-nothings in the media. If he waded into scientific disputes, he’d just be another non-expert voice in the cacophony and wouldn’t add any value.
The truth is there is so MUCH knowledge out there, nobody can be an expert at everything. We are blighted by media commentators, columnists and rent-a-quotes who prognosticate about every social, scientific and economic issue in sight, despite not really having much clue about them. Tim largely sticks at what he knows, and that makes all the more beautiful his demolitions of those who have strayed unwisely into his area of expertise while far from the bounds of their own understanding.
Well said, UQ.
I’d also note that it’s not just the Utterly Stupid wing of the Green Party who insist that avoiding AGW involves returning to medieval squalor – it’s also a popular trope among hardcore denialists who pretend that CO2 reduction will destroy the economy rather than being a minor cost.