Abstract
Climate change constitutes a particularly tricky policy dilemma as noted by the rhetoric that surrounds both the science and potential response to the threat of global warming. In addition to a brief discussion of the rhetoric surrounding the opposing views of global warming, whether it is unprecedented and anthropogenic in origin – there is clearly no consensus – this chapter provides an introduction to climate science, the issues pertaining to global warming, and the economics of climate change.
I’m offended that science is being perverted in the name of global warming – today’s environmental cause célèbre. … [T]he world seems to have lost its collective mind and substituted political belief for the spirit of scientific inquiry. – From the Preface of Global Warming: False Alarm by Ralph Alexander
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Notes
- 1.
See http://www.columbia.edu/∼jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf (viewed October 13, 2009).
- 2.
All quotes here and elsewhere that are not otherwise cited can be found at: http://www.c3headlines.com/global-warming-quotes-climate-change-quotes.html and/or http://www.laurentian.ca/Laurentian/Home/Research/Special+Projects/Climate+Change+Case+Study/Quotes/Quotes.htm?Laurentian_Lang=en-CA (viewed July 20, 2009).
- 3.
See Bender (2009). Kerry also co-sponsored the Senate climate bill in Fall 2009.
- 4.
See www.noteviljustwrong.com (viewed April 14, 2010).
- 5.
See www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/us/politics/24obama.text.html (viewed December 4, 2009).
- 6.
Information on spending is available in the annual report to Congress, entitled Our Changing Planet, with the latest available at http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/ocp2009/ocp2009.pdf (viewed October 9, 2009).
- 7.
In 2000, the ExxonMobil Foundation provided a grant of $15,000 to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, known to have links with Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas and Craig Idso, well-known ‘deniers’; the Foundation and ExxonMobil Corp also contributed $160,000 over 3 years to the George T. Marshall Institute (headed by George O’Keefe, formerly of the American Petroleum Institute), and more than $900,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (Nesmith, 2003). Paul Krugman even wrote: “A leaked memo from a 1998 meeting at the American Petroleum Institute, in which Exxon … was a participant, describes a strategy of providing ‘logistical and moral support’ to climate change dissenters, ‘thereby raising questions about and undercutting the ‘prevailing scientific wisdom’.’ And that’s just what Exxon Mobil has done: lavish grants have supported a sort of alternative intellectual universe of global warming skeptics” (New York Times, April 17, 2006). http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407EEDD173FF934A25757C0A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=&&scp=3&sq=Exxon%20skeptic%20climate&st=cse (viewed October 9, 2009). Thus, Krugman and the environmental lobby pursued Exxon into providing $100 million in funding to Stanford’s Global Climate and Energy Project, which conducts research into alternative fuels … [and funds] carbon-capture research with the EU (see Colvin 2007 at (viewed October 9, 2009): http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/30/8405398/index2.htm)
- 8.
At http://members.greenpeace.org/blog/exxonsecrets/2009/05/26/exxon_admits_ 2008_ funding_of_global_warm (viewed October 13, 2009).
- 9.
The case involved Stewart Andrew Dimmock (Claimant/Respondent) versus Secretary of State for Education & Skills (Defendant/Appellant), case number CO/3615/2007, Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, September 27, 2007. For more information and a full transcript of the Court’s ruling, see (viewed October 6, 2009): http://www.newparty.co.uk/articles/inaccuracies-gore.html
- 10.
See The Economist (February 6, 2010, p. 85), which is rather tolerant of the problems within the IPCC and somewhat harsher on its critics.
- 11.
Texas and other parties took the EPA to court arguing that it has exceeded its mandate in attempting to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. See Bakst (2010).
- 12.
Foremost are astrophysicists who attribute global changes in climate to solar forcing (Parker 1999; Wu et al. 2009), cosmic rays and their impact on cloud formation (Svensmark and Calder 2007), or other astronomical factors. Climate scientists are vigorous in attacking these theories, particularly those related to sunspots (e.g., Weaver 2008), although some non-anthropogenic explanations of warming, such as the cosmic ray-cloud formation theory, are beginning to be tested (http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/, viewed April 23, 2010). These and other theories, and critiques of the science, are discussed in Chap. 5.
- 13.
See The Economist (August 7, 2010, pp. 79–80), Lakhani and Jeppesen (2007), Lakhani et al., (2007), and http://blog.innocentive.com/2009/05/07/the-innocentive-insider-surprising-but-true/ (viewed August 20, 2010).
- 14.
See http://www.globalwarming.org/2009/02/12/john-christy-debates-william-schlesinger/ and video at http://www.johnlocke.org/lockerroom/lockerroom.html?id=18946 (October 13, 2009).
- 15.
At the World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists held in Montreal, June 28–July 2, 2010, a number of papers examined, for example, the statistical methods underlying reconstructions of past temperatures, statistical effects of local dimming caused by particulates, and multivariate statistical methods for investigating climate data series (see www.wcere2010.org).
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van Kooten, G.C. (2013). Introduction. In: Climate Change, Climate Science and Economics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4988-7_1
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