I think I’ll bump this up a couple of notches.
Moved from IMHO to GD.
I don’t get it.
You shouldn’t, as it simply doesn’t exist. 30 years ago we were told to worry about global cooling. A couple hundred years ago we were told to worry about witches, same thing. Meh.
So by your premise:
Trying to stop global warming = stifling economic growth = ensuring standards of living for people in Africa, East Asia etc. will never improve?
I really think books could be written on why this is wrong and ill-informed.
Just for starters, Africa has done pretty much zilch to try and prevent global warming. By your reasoning, therefore, the entire continent should be doing great economically…except really not so much. Lack of stable governments will do that.
As for East Asia, what parts of East Asia? Japan? I really doubt the people there need your concern for their standards of living. China? China is an environmental mess and its economy is booming so that will make you happy. It probably doesn’t make the 750,000 people who die each year from pollution too excited, however.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/8f40e248-28c7-11dc-af78-000b5df10621.html
They do have to cut their population down though so maybe you are on to something.
So you don’t want to prevent global warming because it will stifle economic growth and you need economic growth to deal with the consequences of global warming…locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen comes to mind.
And you still haven’t explained how global warming inhibits economic growth.
I think the bottom line here is you just don’t want to give a rat’s ass. That or you’re afraid that your shop will be taxed and people will be taxed and they won’t buy tchatzkahs in your shop because the money they would ordinarily spend on your tchatzkahs would be going to taxes and then your economic growth would be inhibited and you wouldn’t be able to buy tchatzkahs in other people’s shops.
This is a crap argument. Is SBSO claiming that global warming is the only thing inhibiting economic growth. No.
Whoa, hold on a second, that’s a little unfair, don’t you think? Africa has a whole bunch of Kyoto signatories, which may or may not be worth much in practice, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
Britain & most of Northern Europe won’t necessarily get warmer due to global warming. Increased melting of Arctic ice can affect the oceans’ salinity–possibly shutting down the Gulf Stream.
Ready for a new Ice Age?
buys gloves
I think the current thinking on this is that, while some weakening of the Gulf Stream is very likely, it is very unlikely to shut down completely (at least during this century) and the effects of such a slowdown are not likely to be enough to lead to net cooling in Northern Europe. In particular, here is what the latest IPCC report says on the subject in the summer for policymakers:
On the basis of what evidence do you claim this?
The impact of limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 is calculated as follows:
The source for these figures is Working Group III contribution to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report - Summary for Policymakers PDF (page 16)
Another relevant quote from that report:
In other words, it is fallacious to assume that out current economic system is perfectly efficient and some of the actions taken to limit GHGs will make us more, not less, economically efficient, and will therefore contribute to economic growth.
By way of comparison, the UK expended 1% of its GDP on gambling in 2004, about as useless an economic activity as one can imagine.
Quote from an examination of witnesses by Parliament.
The belief that limiting GHG emissions will break the economy indicates that gambling has already broken the British economy - something no one seems to believe.
Contributing to the elimination of poverty is laudable, but it’s a false dichotomy to say that you can either reduce poverty or reduce GHG - you can do both. The image it brings to mind is some plaintive future Englishman standing next to the shore of the Congo in Kinshasha, telling some poor villager as he’s swept away by a flood that it was either giving him a mosquito net or cutting back on carbon emissions. :rolleyes:
I have not read that cite, but I must point out that in my opinion the effects on the British economy are not that important. What are the consequences for African economies?
The consequences of warming for most African countries are predicted to be significantly worse than for most temperate-zone countries such as Britain and the US. They will be subject to much more drastic changes in drought and flooding, for example, with correspondingly severe impacts on agriculture. As this November 2006 article notes,
Developments like these will prove extremely expensive for African countries to cope with. ISTM difficult to picture a realistic scenario where limiting anthropogenic climate change would turn out to be more expensive for Africa than dealing with the effects of unchecked climate change. Even if draconian emissions-reduction efforts produced a severe world-wide depression (and AFAIK, no such extreme economic consequences are being seriously predicted for the climate-mitigation scenarios that the IPCC has proposed), it’s not clear to me that even that would be more costly for Africans on average than coping with widespread climate disaster.
In fact, since Africans on average produce far less greenhouse gas emissions than people in developing nations, global climate mitigation efforts might even be a net economic positive for them, if the industrialized world follows the recommendations on technology transfer, investment in sustainable development, and other forms of aid that have been put forward by analysts. Africa could conceivably get more out of having industrialized countries subsidize clean-infrastructure development for them than they would lose in having to reduce their emissions.
The British economy is considerably more carbon-intensive than African economies (like all industrialized nations), so there will be less of an impact on African economies that attempt to limit carbon emissions than on the British economy. For example, it’s much more likely that the average Briton will own a car and have to consider how to use less gasoline than the average African.
Sorry about the misconception, the OP makes it sound like you are much more concerned about Britain than Africa.
Isn’t it a myth that the Gulf Stream really affects the UK’s climate, though? I swear I read a paper once, to that effect.
Nope. The misunderstanding seems to come from the popular misperception that the Gulf Stream is the only thing making the climate of Western Europe warmer than the climate of some other regions at comparable latitudes (like the Atlantic coast of North America). Without the “overturning (thermohaline) circulation” associated with the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic would not turn into the North Pole, climate-wise. But that’s not to say the Gulf Stream actually has zero effect on the region’s climate. This report about recent concerns over a Gulf Stream slowdown notes (emphasis added):
What kimstu says. In particular, what that paper claimed is a myth is that the only reason or even the primary reason that Northern Europe is warmer than, say, comparable latitudes on the east coast of North America is due to the Gulf Stream or thermohaline circulation. They said that a more important effect is just the fact that the prevailing westerly winds mean the east coast of the continent is getting weather systems from the continental interior, which are not being moderated by the ocean as weather systems coming over the ocean are (regardless of whether the ocean is even further warmed by the warm currents). Hence, e.g., the fact that Seattle’s climate is also considerably more temperate in the winter than, say, that of Boston even though Boston is considerably further south. Another factor that comes into play is apparently that the Rocky Mountains tend to force the jet stream to buckle in a way that directs more cold air southeastward on the east side of these mountains across the central and Eastern U.S. and then tends to direct more warm air northeastward over the eastern Atlantic toward northern Europe.
In fact, when I noted in my previous post that current thinking seems to be that the slowdown of thermohaline circulation will not cause net cooling of northern Europe, I think this reflects both the evolving thinking that a complete shutdown of this circulation (at least in this century) is unlikely plus the thinking that the contribution of this circulation to the warming of Northern Europe is not as great as was once believed.
To clarify further: For Africa to come out of the third world, it must develop, and ideally rapidly.
I would be very surprised if this would not be substantially easier with no thought given to carbon emissions.
Why? After all, Africa hasn’t been giving a thought to carbon emissions for the past fifty years or so of postcolonial independence, but for the most part it still hasn’t developed rapidly or emerged from the third world. I seriously doubt that continuing to ignore carbon emissions will prove to be any kind of key to rapid African development.
What’s really standing in the way of rapid development for most African countries is not the burden of carbon regulation but rather a whole host of political, social, and economic issues. Large-scale (and largely decentralized) renewable energy development is IMHO arguably more promising as a path to African prosperity than simply locking them into dependence on increasingly-expensive fossil fuels and increasing emissions.
Apparently African economic growth has followed a similar pattern to that of Vincent Schiavelli’s hair.
The 1965-1990 growth rate for Sub-Saharan Africa was 0.2% (not 2%, 0.2%).
The 1980-1990 growth rate for Sub-Saharan Africa was -0.9%.
Cite: http://www.ifpri.org/2020/briefs/number01.htm
Clearly, an ability to emit carbon from fossil fuels isn’t the African economic problem - there haven’t been any restrictions on emissions in the time periods mentioned. Africa is nothing but a red herring for people in the industrialized countries who want to emit carbon without regard to the consequences. African carbon emissions are negligible compared to those of the industrialized world. The burden of carbon restrictions will be on economies that emit the most carbon, not on the smallest, most globally insignificant economies in the world.