Global Warming Economics Don't Make Sense

Freeman Dyson, physicist and mathematician, has some real problems with the economics of “fighting” global warming, stating that many of the more popular cures, such as that proposed by Al Gore, will cause far more damage to both humankind and Earth's climate than doing nothing.

While I have seen many approaches to questioning the inconvenient truths of global warming, Dyson's approach makes more sense than most of the others.

Dyson is not a global warming skeptic, but he does question the methods put forward to reduce global warming. It makes no sense, he says, to spend trillions of dollars trying to do so if those efforts cause trillions of dollars more damage than they prevent.

With this, I can agree. Putting forward plans of dubious value and unproven efficacy is lunacy, particularly when far less would be spent adapting to global warming, assuming it's really going to happen. Dyson and I aren't the only ones questioning such a course. A number of governments have started to realize the amounts of capital they'll have to put up as well as how much damage they'll do to their economies with absolutely no guarantee their efforts will have any but a minuscule effect on climate change. Plus, too many people are skeptical their governments have the answers and aren't willing to give them the money and power to implement questionable policies.

As more evidence becomes available, I have become more skeptical that global warming, assuming it is taking place, can be laid at the feet of human activity. There are too many other factors that affect climate, almost all of which existed long before man existed and still affect Earth's climate today. Also, the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods showed that a warmer global climate has its advantages, with longer growing seasons, particularly in the higher latitudes. The true believers assume that global warming means catastrophe when historical records point towards better conditions, not worse.

In fact, I am leaning more towards those climatologists and solar astronomers that say it's more likely the sun is the cause of the climate changes we've seen over the past 100 years or more. If temperatures on Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the other planets have been rising as they have on Earth, then it's like they all have the same cause, and it's not human activity. And if it turns out the sun is the cause of climate change, then any activity we partake based upon the assumption that It's-All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans™ will have little, if any effect on climate change. All it will do is waste time and a lot of cash.

I don't know about you, but I see spending of that magnitude based upon such flimsy evidence and defective computer models that don't even come close to predicting what's really happening as nothing more than a sucker bet.