The High Cost of Centrally Planning the Global Climate

Mises Institute ^ | May 1, 2015 | Ryan McMaken

[all the best]

Since I’m not a person who follows the climate-change debate or climate science in detail, I don’t get involved in discussions over temperature readings or climate trends. On the other hand, I find it’s a very bad idea to leave the science of economics and political economy up to climate scientists and their friends in politics who tend to be woefully deficient in their knowledge of how economies work or how scarce goods and amenities can be preserved, obtained, or manufactured.

It seems that for the global warming lobby, all that is necessary to set everything right is to hand control of the global economy over to governmental central planners. In their minds, the machinery of government only needs to be set in motion, and everything will be done with righteous precision to preserve the climatological status quo by increasing the cost of energy and cutting economic activity. The costs of such a venture, whether in money or in human lives and human comfort, need never be considered, because, we are told, the only alternative is the total destruction of planet earth.

This “Follow Us or Die!” routine is a propagandist’s dream of course, but in real life, where more rational heads — on occasion — prevail, the costs of any proposed government action must be considered against the costs of the alternatives. Moreover, the burden of proof is on those who wish to use government, since their plan involves using the violence of the state to carry out their proposed mandates.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that global climate change is occurring and that the sea level is rising. This still leaves several unanswered questions for the global warming enthusiasts:

[demshateGod]

In the early 20th we trusted our whole lifestyle to architects and city planners. The cities were destroyed and have never, and will never recover.

[rlmorel]

Summed up in one single phrase: “Central Planning”.

Worse, central planning by statists and ideologues. What could go wrong?

[katana]

tend to be woefully deficient in their knowledge of how economies work or how scarce goods and amenities can be preserved, obtained, or manufactured

Considering their demonstrated ignorance of the geologic record, historical changes in climate and its effects on agriculture and human migration, the carbon cycle and photosynthesis, solar activity cycles, and the very simple fact that the biosphere thrives best in a warm moist climate (you know, the kind they're predicting will kill us all) their knowledge is woefully deficient on countless levels.

[preacher]

Later

[InterceptPoint]

The purpose of the Global Climate Change Movement is to move money from you and me to The Movement and their friends.

Climate Science is now totally corrupted and no longer trustworthy. Government money only funds the lies, the data fudging and misrepresentation and will not fund honest science. That's life. We are stuck with that for now.

And have no doubt that this is a very successful movement. Go do a Google search on the amount money being spent on "Climate Change". It is stupendous.

For example: $10 billion budget in 2015

[HotHunt]

[Organic Panic]

We all have to sacrifice

'Global warming emergency' - Barbra Streisand


"This is the most urgent of times and the most urgent of messages." -Leonardo DiCaprio

"doing business for the wellbeing of people and the planet." -Richard Branson

[bob_denard]

U.S. to face multibillion-dollar bill from climate change: report

(Reuters) - Annual property losses from hurricanes and other coastal storms of $35 billion; a decline in crop yields of 14 percent, costing corn and wheat farmers tens of billions of dollars; heat wave-driven demand for electricity costing utility customers up to $12 billion per year.

These are among the economic costs that climate change is expected to exact in the United States over the next 25 years, according to a bipartisan report released on Tuesday. And that’s just for starters: The price tag could soar to hundreds of billions by 2100.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/24/us-climatechange-economy-idUSKBN0EZ0AA20140624

[FiddlePig]

Said it before... bears repeating IMHO: to “solve” the “crisis” of “Climate Change”...

Earth must essentially become a giant plantation (not unlike the Old South)… and a caste system! Our autocratic rulers will dwell in the “Mansion of the Hill”, us “lowers” in the real mud huts, with most(all?) of our labor stolen (we work for “Master”). Maybe we’ll get a coupla hours of electricity a day, or maybe only a week. All energy, food, medicine and resources will be rationed from the top down (the ULTIMATE “trickle down”!). There also must be total control of your reproductive system (yep, they’re in your bedroom!) as “unauthorized” births must NOT occur. Periodic culling of “non-productive” humans (who decides that... death panels?) will be “executed” to prevent overpopulation... beginning with the sick, the old and possibly those who hold counter-political, moral and religious views to those who rule (aka: Master/Owners)