Great article. Kenya is a good case study. They have relatively high rates of connectivity for Africa, and access to big hydro and geothermal, which, of course, helps, but they don't have the energy budget to cook with electricity, and problems with intermittency and blackouts means that hardly anyone bothers with refrigeration. Even when urbanites buy fridges, refrigeration is only truly labour-saving and a significant economic benefit if one can trust it enough to shift behaviour to convenient and cheap weekly shops. Blackouts can be a huge hit to the economically vulnerable.
The lack of cooking through electricity is a human health catastrophe, and the lack of refrigeration is one of many factors preventing the employment emancipation of women, stunting the economic growth of Kenya. Another is simply that, absent industrialisation, women often prefer homemaking over traditional (subsistence) farming. Production jobs are infinitely preferable to toiling in a field, even with mechanisation, which they largely lack.
Perhaps another factor is the usefulness of ‘carbon’ as a global currency, it certainly has been hijacked into widely accepted accounting processes that affect markets and trade already. What if it were to be revealed that it is actually not as useful as assumed?
This post is trying to spin complications in assigning a social cost to carbon emissions as supporting the claim that it is not worth achieving net zero. That conclusion is not justified! One particularly misleading part of this is on crop yields. The fact that CO2 increases crop yields isn't disputed. The problem is that is reduces nutritional value of crops and that is not addressed here. These papers cover this in more detail:
When climate “modelz” delete ¾ of the Sun and then create energy with magic cow farts (GHG’s), any absurdity/atrocity then becomes possible.
Objectivity is renounced for the subjectivity (arbitrary whims and wishes) of the power lusting PhD witch doctor operating the “modelz”.
Redistributing solar joules from where we know they exist (day) to where we know they do not (night) is deceitful violation of energy conservation deleting ¾ of actual solar joules. Magic energy creating cow farts (+ plant food) are then invoked to exploit our vulnerability to undeserved guilt.
An excellent series of truth. For educational purposes in the elementary school grades there will be much work needed to match the short-term attention spans of modern youth, incredibly shorter than their Victorian and Edwardian antecedents.
Matt, you have perfectly summed up the sceptical position on this issue but the absolute proof that climate change is not a threat is the fact that deaths from climate events has fallen by over 95% in 100 years. Man has shown the ability to adapt to whatever Mother Nature throws at him. This massive trend would be the exact opposite if the alarmists were right.i can’t point to even one person in the world who has been saved from premature death by the erection of a wind turbine but adaption as a policy has an unbelievable proven track record. All other discussion is irrelevant. Reducing emissions is irrelevant. Warming or cooling is irrelevant. The only risk to society is that climate policies will make the benefits of adaption such as air conditioning unaffordable or unreliable causing a huge number of unnecessary deaths
It’s interesting how the planet keeps its balance. If only human beings had the ability to perceive the magnificence, and wisdom, or nature. I know Matt is not religious - I’ve read The Red Queen - but this is precisely the kind of topic that religion was meant for, because the alternatives lead to destruction - a bit like “net-zero”
I wish you were right. Unfortunately, your article comes across as a case study in motivated reasoning - cherry picking facts and using them out of context to support a prior view, which is some way off reality. For example, you include a quote from Stern and Stiglitz to suggest that the social cost of carbon is low, when they are actually arguing the opposite, that Integrated Assessment Models underestimate the costs of climate change because of faulty assumptions. You omitted this context. For info, the faulty assumptions include that IAMs miss the effects of earth system tipping points, non-linear and compound losses, and other things that are difficult to model because of lack of historical data and uncertainty . Actuaries and climate scientists who have looked at the modelling difficulties expect these missing-from-IAMs elements to be the main sources of economic damage from climate change - many multiples of the physical damages we've experienced so far which are already massive - but you don't mention them at all. Another commentator has already challenged your cherry picking about the effects on crop yields vs nutrition, and you don't mention the effects of changing temperature and weather patterns on the shrinking availability of arable land due to loss of soil moisuture, salinization, desertification etc (see IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land). If you're aiming for a cost/benefit view, it's odd not to consider the cost savings and job creation of energy transition, energy security and other benefits of net zero. Lots of credible organisations have done this, see the UK's Climate Change Committee for example. That said, I have to admit that suspending reason for a short while to read your article produced a nice calm feeling for a few moments - and is obviously popular with climate sceptics who follow your stuff - but sadly it's not real.
If we're to fix anything, it is nothing man-made, only preservation, simplistic reliable designs, minimal invasive practices, the smaller the footprint, the better we're doing, anything helping nature is obviously a plus
In an ever increasingly mad world, it’s true that it’s hard to remain sane……I can foresee upcoming vaxes ( erasure vaxes) because the inconvenient truth that carbon dioxide is the greatest friend to nature and mankind. Mankind numbers thriving, safeguarding the world by exhaling 8.3 billion tons if CO2 per day, multiples of CO2 from coal fired power stations alone, excluding steel making, cement etc.
Thank you!
I never understood the vilification of carbon dioxide and carbon until I read - "you are the carbon they wish to reduce."
It can only make sense to people who don’t understand discount rates.
Otherwise blowing billions of dollars of lost productivity and growth today for amorphous benefits to the weather in future decades is a hard sell.
If by hard sell you mean ignorant we agree. 😉
Great article. Kenya is a good case study. They have relatively high rates of connectivity for Africa, and access to big hydro and geothermal, which, of course, helps, but they don't have the energy budget to cook with electricity, and problems with intermittency and blackouts means that hardly anyone bothers with refrigeration. Even when urbanites buy fridges, refrigeration is only truly labour-saving and a significant economic benefit if one can trust it enough to shift behaviour to convenient and cheap weekly shops. Blackouts can be a huge hit to the economically vulnerable.
The lack of cooking through electricity is a human health catastrophe, and the lack of refrigeration is one of many factors preventing the employment emancipation of women, stunting the economic growth of Kenya. Another is simply that, absent industrialisation, women often prefer homemaking over traditional (subsistence) farming. Production jobs are infinitely preferable to toiling in a field, even with mechanisation, which they largely lack.
C.S. Lewis on moral busybodies springs to mind.
Perhaps another factor is the usefulness of ‘carbon’ as a global currency, it certainly has been hijacked into widely accepted accounting processes that affect markets and trade already. What if it were to be revealed that it is actually not as useful as assumed?
This post is trying to spin complications in assigning a social cost to carbon emissions as supporting the claim that it is not worth achieving net zero. That conclusion is not justified! One particularly misleading part of this is on crop yields. The fact that CO2 increases crop yields isn't disputed. The problem is that is reduces nutritional value of crops and that is not addressed here. These papers cover this in more detail:
“Rising atmospheric CO2 also reduces the nutritional value of crops, reducing protein content and the concentration of key micronutrients” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12121383
“Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition” https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13179
“Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition”
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13179
“Elevated CO2 levels cause mineral deficiency in plants resulting in less nutritious crops”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/11/221103120048.htm
When climate “modelz” delete ¾ of the Sun and then create energy with magic cow farts (GHG’s), any absurdity/atrocity then becomes possible.
Objectivity is renounced for the subjectivity (arbitrary whims and wishes) of the power lusting PhD witch doctor operating the “modelz”.
Redistributing solar joules from where we know they exist (day) to where we know they do not (night) is deceitful violation of energy conservation deleting ¾ of actual solar joules. Magic energy creating cow farts (+ plant food) are then invoked to exploit our vulnerability to undeserved guilt.
We have to grow up from this vulnerability.
An excellent series of truth. For educational purposes in the elementary school grades there will be much work needed to match the short-term attention spans of modern youth, incredibly shorter than their Victorian and Edwardian antecedents.
Matt, you have perfectly summed up the sceptical position on this issue but the absolute proof that climate change is not a threat is the fact that deaths from climate events has fallen by over 95% in 100 years. Man has shown the ability to adapt to whatever Mother Nature throws at him. This massive trend would be the exact opposite if the alarmists were right.i can’t point to even one person in the world who has been saved from premature death by the erection of a wind turbine but adaption as a policy has an unbelievable proven track record. All other discussion is irrelevant. Reducing emissions is irrelevant. Warming or cooling is irrelevant. The only risk to society is that climate policies will make the benefits of adaption such as air conditioning unaffordable or unreliable causing a huge number of unnecessary deaths
It’s interesting how the planet keeps its balance. If only human beings had the ability to perceive the magnificence, and wisdom, or nature. I know Matt is not religious - I’ve read The Red Queen - but this is precisely the kind of topic that religion was meant for, because the alternatives lead to destruction - a bit like “net-zero”
In the name of CO2 emissions and climate change, solar pv is being promoted without knowing its effect on CO2 emissions.
I wish you were right. Unfortunately, your article comes across as a case study in motivated reasoning - cherry picking facts and using them out of context to support a prior view, which is some way off reality. For example, you include a quote from Stern and Stiglitz to suggest that the social cost of carbon is low, when they are actually arguing the opposite, that Integrated Assessment Models underestimate the costs of climate change because of faulty assumptions. You omitted this context. For info, the faulty assumptions include that IAMs miss the effects of earth system tipping points, non-linear and compound losses, and other things that are difficult to model because of lack of historical data and uncertainty . Actuaries and climate scientists who have looked at the modelling difficulties expect these missing-from-IAMs elements to be the main sources of economic damage from climate change - many multiples of the physical damages we've experienced so far which are already massive - but you don't mention them at all. Another commentator has already challenged your cherry picking about the effects on crop yields vs nutrition, and you don't mention the effects of changing temperature and weather patterns on the shrinking availability of arable land due to loss of soil moisuture, salinization, desertification etc (see IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land). If you're aiming for a cost/benefit view, it's odd not to consider the cost savings and job creation of energy transition, energy security and other benefits of net zero. Lots of credible organisations have done this, see the UK's Climate Change Committee for example. That said, I have to admit that suspending reason for a short while to read your article produced a nice calm feeling for a few moments - and is obviously popular with climate sceptics who follow your stuff - but sadly it's not real.
If we're to fix anything, it is nothing man-made, only preservation, simplistic reliable designs, minimal invasive practices, the smaller the footprint, the better we're doing, anything helping nature is obviously a plus
This is the best of the six so far published.
Love your articles
What happened to you man?
I’m truly curious how you stay sane in this world, Mr. Ridley. It isn’t easy, IMO.
In an ever increasingly mad world, it’s true that it’s hard to remain sane……I can foresee upcoming vaxes ( erasure vaxes) because the inconvenient truth that carbon dioxide is the greatest friend to nature and mankind. Mankind numbers thriving, safeguarding the world by exhaling 8.3 billion tons if CO2 per day, multiples of CO2 from coal fired power stations alone, excluding steel making, cement etc.