The Climate Caper: Facts and Fallacies of Global Warming by Garth W. Paltridge

Author:Garth W. Paltridge [Paltridge, Garth W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781589795495
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
Published: 2010-06-16T07:00:00+00:00

A Couple of Bottom Lines

In the early days of the global warming business there was a reasonably sensible attitude around the traps to the effect that, in view of the uncertainty of the forecasts of disaster, any expensive preventative action should be undertaken only if it were worth doing for other shorter-term reasons as well. Improving the efficiency of transport would seem to fit that criterion, as perhaps would an eventual move away from electric power stations fired by fossil fuel.

For some strange political reason, the attitude has been lost in the modern frenetic rush to do something immediately – that is to say, as Bertie Wooster would have it, “eftsoons and right speedily”. We are seeing a large fraction of an already vast expenditure on climate being put towards research concerned with carbon sequestration. With burying the stuff, that is. It is hard to imagine how we will be able to put piles of buried carbon to good use for other purposes. It seems there is indeed an innate preference by humankind for options requiring the maximum of self-flagellation.

On another issue, it is worth referring again to the work of the Professor Garnaut.

His calculations involved running models of Australian climate one hundred years into the future. He used the forecasts so obtained to drive other models of the national economy over the same period. One is irresistibly reminded of the blind leading the blind. Never mind. Setting that aside, the main result of all the activity was the calculation of a negative impact of reduced rainfall on important agricultural regions such as the Murray-Darling basin. It seems that this will cause a 10 percent reduction (below what it would otherwise have been) of the material welfare of the average Australian. As a consequence we must ‘act now’ by running around like a lot of demented souls telling everyone that the end of the world is nigh. And we must turn the economy upside down at the same time.

Well, maybe. It all appears terribly naive. Particularly when in the same breath Professor Garnaut tells us that, even when all the disaster of climate change has come upon them, the Australians of the early 22nd century will be nearly four times wealthier than we are.

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