Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Like the weather, for example—whether we are talking about rainfall and flooding (or
droughts for that matter) in the UK, or hurricanes and typhoons in the tropics. The weather
has always varied, and it always will. There have always been extremes, and there always
willbe.Thatbeingso,itclearlymakessensetomakeourselvesmoreresilientandrobustin
thefaceofextremeweatherevents,whetherornotthereisaslightincreaseinthefrequency
or severity of such events.
This means measures such as flood defences and sea defences, together with water
storage to minimise the adverse effects of drought, in the UK; and better storm warnings,
the building of levees, and more robust construction in the tropics.
The same is equally true in the field of health. Tropical diseases—and malaria is
frequently (if inaccurately) mentioned in this context—are a mortal menace in much of the
developing world. It clearly makes sense to seek to eradicate these diseases—and in the
case of malaria (which used to be endemic in Europe) we know perfectly well how to do
it— whether or not warming might lead to an increase in the incidence of such diseases.
Andthesameappliestoalltheotherpossibleadverseconsequencesofglobalwarming.
Moreover, this makes sense whatever the cause of any future warming, whether it is
man-made or natural. Happily, too, as economies grow and technology develops, our
ability to adapt successfully to any problems which warming may bring steadily increases.
Yet, astonishingly, this is not the course on which our leaders in the Western world
generally, and the UK in particular, have embarked. They have decided that what we must
do, at inordinate cost, is prevent the possibility (as they see it) of any further warming by
abandoning the use of fossil fuels.
Even if this were attainable—a big 'if', which I will discuss later— there is no way in
whichthiscouldberemotelycost-effective.Thecosttotheworldeconomyofmovingfrom
relatively cheap and reliable energy to much more expensive and much less reliable forms
of energy—the so-called renewables, on which we had to rely before we were liberated by
the fossil-fuel-driven Industrial Revolution—far exceeds any conceivable benefit.
It is true that the notorious
Stern Review—
widely promoted by a British prime minister
withsomethingofamessiahcomplexandanundoubtedtalentforpublicrelations—sought
to demonstrate the reverse, and has become a bible for the economically illiterate.
But Stern's dodgy economics have been comprehensively demolished by the most
distinguished economists on both sides of the Atlantic. So much so, in fact, that Lord Stern
himself has been driven to complain that it is all the fault of the integrated assessment
models, which—and I quote him—'come close to assuming directly that the impacts and
costs will be modest, and close to excluding the possibility of catastrophic outcomes'.
I suggested earlier that these elaborate models are scarcely worth the computer code
they are written in, and certainly the divergence between their predictions and empirical
observationshasbecomeeverwider.Nevertheless,itisabitrichforSternnowtocomplain
