$52 trillion: That's how much denying climate change may cost the world

Charles Koch believes in the free market. His objections to government regulations are always the same: "They distort the free market". But what if the market itself is distorted? Economists call this "failure of the market".

One example of market failure is the dust bowl on the American Great Plains in the 1930s. Farmers pursued practices that destroyed the topsoil until it was blown away. This market failure happened because short-term profits (cash crops) kept farmers from using sustainable methods until the soil was ruined and people had to abandon their farms.

A similar market failure led to the collapse of the Sumerian civilization, which was based on advanced farming using irrigation. The civilization thrived until the soil became too salty to produce crops. Then the Sumerian civilizations failed, big-time.

Is this the destiny in store for us? Will our civilization, so large and impressive, be destroyed by market failure?

Climate change is the biggest failure of the market in the history of the world. It is the first one we know of that affects the entire planet. It is also the first market failure caused by polluting the atmosphere as opposed to being produced by destroying the ecosystem.

Scientists have studied the current climate change for the last 50 years. They have become aware of what is happening and why. Economists have only recently begun to study the possible effects of climate change. Since economists are well-versed in making predictions about the future, their predictions should be taken seriously, no matter how extreme they may sound to our ears. This is especially true when the economists in question work for citi, one of the Big Four banks of the US. Citi has just produced an extensive study of the economic effects of Climate Change. Their conclusions are eye-opening.

The report issued by citi economists measures the economic effects of ignoring climate change as opposed to doing something about it right away. The effects of ignoring it, as you might imagine, are horrendous. The report uses three scenarios of action. In one, the green path, the planet is able to keep the temperature from rising more than1.5 degrees Centigrade. In that case, the global GDP will be reduced by 0.7% or $20 trillion by 2060. In the worst-case scenario, the temperature will rise 4.5 degrees Centigrade and global GDP will be reduced by $72 trillion.

In brief, the citi report predicts that doing nothing would cost the world $52 trillion more than spending the money now to reduce our fossil fuel use and take other steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But here again, we may run into the problem of market failure, because the people who make money by producing CO2--primarily fossil fuel producing companies--will not be the ones who will have to pay for the mess they are creating. Instead, those who pay will be our children and grandchildren.

There will be a summit meeting in Paris in December to decide what actions to take globally to avert such a catastrophe. We will all need to take action.

Rupert Murdoch keeps trying to kill us all

The Wall Street Journal ran another opinion piece that is skeptical of climate scientists. This one was written by Joseph Bast of the Heartland Institute and infamous denier, Roy Spencer. Rupert Murdoch published this article as an "opinion", though he knows it's not an opinion at all, but a virtual press release for the energy industry. He should not publish it except as an advertisement, and the WSJ should be paid for it. At least he should if he cared about journalistic ethics, but apparently he does not.

Rupert is flying high these days. He owns most of the newspapers in Australia, where 85% of the articles he runs on global warming are skeptical. Murdoch's long-term campaign has influenced the Australian electorate so well that the new, Conservative prime minister has proposed repealing the carbon tax, which will result in accelerated global warming and more unnecessary deaths.

Bast works for an organization which is neither a think tank nor a research institute. It is a public relations firm, bought and paid for by oil company money. Heartland has a long history of attacking scientists whose opinion is inconvenient to corporations. They are strong supporters of the tobacco companies, preaching that second-hand smoke is harmless. They are strong supporters of asbestos companies, preaching that asbestos is almost harmless, and even, in the long run, beneficial.

Now Heartland has taken on global warming, which it claims is unimportant, harmless, and exaggerated. It is using the same tactics it used against scientists who warned against the harmful effects of tobacco and asbestos. It takes money from the companies without giving any indication of where their money comes from. Check the Wall Street Journal article. Do you see any mention that Heartland takes major funding from the Koch brothers? Of course not. The whole purpose of this kind of PR campaign is to smear the honest scientists and reward dishonest ones for their assault on truth. Heartland does it very well. They should, because they have been doing the same thing for 30 years. 

Spencer does not deny his role in this charade. The only job of a scientist is to discover the truth. But Spencer says his job is

a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government.

Spencer--a University professor--is supported by the government, but he gets extra income from climate deniers like the Koch brothers. Serious scientists have ignored Spencer for years because he has been wrong so many times in so many different ways. But he keeps on getting published in the popular press because it suits the purpose of those who profit from filling our atmosphere with deadly greenhouse gases.

The point of view of the WSJ article is that the claim that 97% of climate scientists accept global warming is a myth. The number comes from counting the number of articles that oppose man-made global warming which were published in peer-reviewed journals during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ninety-seven per cent of those articles either supported the theory of man-made global warming or didn't mention the topic. Only 3% of the articles opposed the theory, though not all of them dismissed it out of hand.

That 97% is an outdated figure. Between 1991 and 2012,  13,950 peer-reviewed articles have been published. Only 24 of them rejected the theory of global warming. Using the same method that led to the 97% figure mentioned in the article, we find the total percentage of scientific articles written by scientists who support the theory of man-made climate change is 99.8%.

Bast and Spencer argue with that figure. I suppose they must, since it makes the situation quite clear and they don't like the situation, nor do their energy-industry clients. But the figure is actually meaningless, because science is not determined by democratic vote. It is determined by scientific studies that can be repeated by other scientists. Using that measure, there is not a single study that contradicts the theory of man-made global warming. Not one.

Climate change deniers are not scientists. They do not care whether the temperature of the earth rises 10 degrees or sea level rises 50 feet. Their attitude is the same as the investment who abbreviated their rationale for capsizing the world economy: IBGYBG. I'll be gone, you'll be gone. This was their justification for causing millions of people to lose their life savings and millions more to lose their jobs. It didn't matter because the investment bankers would not suffer personally, someone else would suffer. IBGYBG.

When it comes to climate change, the lack of morality in that phrase, "I'll be gone, you'll be gone", reaches the level of obscenity. Yes, Rupert Murdoch will be gone. David Koch will be gone. You and I may also be gone. But we will be leaving our children and grandchildren to suffer. Many of they will die, from hunger, thirst, heat, or violence caused by the vicious struggle for survival in an uncertain future.

IBGYBG means many will die. Rupert Murdoch, by continuing to publish such propaganda, is causing people to die, just as certainly as if he took a gun and pulled the trigger. Rupert Murdoch is trying to kill us all.