Geen paniek! Een beetje opwarming is goed voor de wereld!
Richard Tol heeft het voor ons uitgerekend.
CO2 en de (vermeende) opwarming van de aarde zitten al járen in het verdomhoekje. CO2 zou tot (catastrofale) opwarming leiden en opwarming zou slecht zijn voor de aarde en de mensheid. Wetenschappelijk onderzoek wijst uit dat dit waanideeën zijn.
Onder de titel, 'Don't panic! The scientific consensus is that warmer temperatures do more good than harm', schreef Matt Ridley onder meer:
Climate change has done more good than harm so far and is likely to continue doing so for most of this century. This is not some barmy, right-wing fantasy; it is the consensus of expert opinion. Yet almost nobody seems to know this. Whenever I make the point in public, I am told by those who are paid to insult anybody who departs from climate alarm that I have got it embarrassingly wrong, dont know what I am talking about, must be referring to Britain only, rather than the world as a whole, and so forth. ..
There are many likely effects of climate change: positive and negative, economic and ecological, humanitarian and financial. And if you aggregate them all, the overall effect is positive today and likely to stay positive until around 2080. That was the conclusion of Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University after he reviewed 14 different studies of the effects of future climate trends.
To be precise, Prof Tol calculated that climate change would be beneficial up to 2.2?C of warming from 2009 (when he wrote his paper). This means approximately 3?C from pre-industrial levels, since about 0.8?C of warming has happened in the last 150 years. The latest estimates of climate sensitivity suggest that such temperatures may not be reached till the end of the century if at all. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose reports define the consensus, is sticking to older assumptions, however, which would mean net benefits till about 2080. Either way, its a long way off.
Now Prof Tol has a new paper, published as a chapter in a new book, called How Much have Global Problems Cost the World?, which is edited by Bjørn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, and was reviewed by a group of leading economists. In this paper he casts his gaze backwards to the last century. He concludes that climate change did indeed raise human and planetary welfare during the 20th century. ...
You can choose not to believe the studies Prof Tol has collated. Or you can say the net benefit is small (which it is), you can argue that the benefits have accrued more to rich countries than poor countries (which is true) or you can emphasise that after 2080 climate change would probably do net harm to the world (which may also be true). You can even say you do not trust the models involved (though they have proved more reliable than the temperature models). But what you cannot do is deny that this is the current consensus. If you wish to accept the consensus on temperature models, then you should accept the consensus on economic benefit. ...
The chief benefits of global warming include: fewer winter deaths; lower energy costs; better agricultural yields; probably fewer droughts; maybe richer biodiversity. It is a little-known fact that winter deaths exceed summer deaths not just in countries like Britain but also those with very warm summers, including Greece. Both Britain and Greece see mortality rates rise by 18 per cent each winter. Especially cold winters cause a rise in heart failures far greater than the rise in deaths during heatwaves. ...
The greatest benefit from climate change comes not from temperature change but from carbon dioxide itself. It is not pollution, but the raw material from which plants make carbohydrates and thence proteins and fats. The increase in average carbon dioxide levels over the past century, from 0.03 per cent to 0.04 per cent of the air, has had a measurable impact on plant growth rates. It is responsible for a startling change in the amount of greenery on the planet. ...
Lees verder hier.
Ik schreef het al eerder: groener kunnen we het niet maken!
Voor mijn eerdere DDSbijdragen zie hier.
Ga verder met lezen
Dit vind je misschien ook leuk
Laat mensen jouw mening weten
Lees ook