The Rational Optimist_ How Prosperity Evolves - Matt Ridley [202]
p. 331 ‘the Dutch economist Richard Tol’. www.ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061031_tol.pdf.
p. 331 ‘With a higher discount rate, Stern’s argument collapses’. See Weitzman, M. 2007. Review of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. Journal of Economic Literature 45 (3): ‘The present discounted value of a given global-warming loss from a century hence at the non-Stern annual interest rate of 6 per cent is one-hundredth of the value of the same loss at Stern’s centuries-long discount rate of 1.4 per cent.’
p. 331 ‘Nigel Lawson asks, reasonably enough’. Lawson, N. 2008. An Appeal to Reason. Duckworth.
p. 331 ‘all six of the IPCC’s scenarios assume that the world will experience so much economic growth that the people alive in 2100 will be on average 4–18 times as wealthy as we are today’. http://www.ipcc.ch/ipcc reports/sres/emission/014.htm.
p. 332 ‘In the hottest scenario, income rises from $1,000 per head in poor countries today to more than $66,000 in 2100 (adjusted for inflation)’. Goklany, I. 2009. Is climate change ‘the defining challenge of our age’? Energy and Environment 20: 279–302.
p. 332 ‘Note that this is true even if climate change itself cuts wealth by Stern’s 20 per cent by 2100: that would mean the world becoming ‘only’ 2–10 times as rich.’ See http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001165a_comment_on_ipcc_wo.html.
p. 332 ‘the Prince of Wales said in 2009’. http://www.spectator.co.uk/politics/all/5186108/the-spectators-notes.thtml.
p. 332 ‘All the futures use market exchange rates instead of purchasing power parities for GDP, further exaggerating warming.’ Castles, I. and Henderson, D. 2003. Economics, emissions scenarios and the work of the IPCC. Energy and Environment 14:422–3. See also Maddison. A. 2007. Contours of the World Economy. Oxford University Press.
pp. 332–3 ‘The trouble with this reasoning is that it applies to all risks, not just climate change.’ http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cd/d16b/d1686.pdf; and http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/weitzman/files/ReactionsCritique.pdf.
p. 334 ‘some countries will continue to gain more land from siltation than they lose to erosion’. Despite this, the journalist George Monbiot incites murder: ‘Every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned.’ (Guardian, 5 December 2006); and James Hansen demands trials for crimes against humanity for having an outlying view: ‘James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming’ (Guardian, 23 June 2008).
p. 334 ‘even the highest estimates of Greenland’s melting’. Luthke, S.B. et al. 2006. Recent Greenland ice mass loss from drainage system from satellite gravity observations. Science 314:1286–9. If anything the rate of melting in Greenland is slowing: van de Wal, R.S.W., et al. 2008. Large and rapid melt-induced velocity changes in the ablation zone of the Greenland ice sheet. Science 321:111.
p. 334 ‘warming will itself reduce the total population at risk for water shortage’. Arnell, N.W., 2004. Climate change and global water resources: SRES emissions and socio-economic scenarios. Global Environmental Change 14: 31–52. Commenting on how the IPCC’s summary for policymakers misreported this paper by omitting all mention of the positive effects caused by more rain falling on populated areas, Indur Goklany writes: ‘To summarize, with respect to water resources, Figure SPM.2 – and its clones – don’t make any false statements, but by withholding information that might place climate change in