Burgess COMMENTARY
Bill Bonner is articulate ... but his thinking is, in my view, completely off base. I don't know what his academic training has been, but it doesn't look as if it includes much science based study. My conclusions, based on pretty much the same data is almost the complete opposite. I guess I have the advantage that I went through school and college thinking science which initially morphed into training as an engineer. I want to know how things work. Later I studied economics, in part because I wanted to understand a bit better how the world worked. I was not particularly impressed with economics because I though the methodology being used was weak ... lots of correlation, but hardly anything about cause and effect. Some years later I had studied accountancy and qualified as a Chartered Accountant ... and have used it all my working life to number economic decisions in a more reliable way.
But, back to Bonner and his views on climate. The data about temperature rise is VERY convincing. There have not been these sorts of temperatures for tens of thousandsa of year. More important the speed of the temperature rise has never been seen before going back millions of years.
The cause of temperature rise is most likely because of the greenhouse gas pollution that is a by-product of industrialization and (wood and fossil fuel) energy use over the past 200 years. Maybe this is not the cause ... but nobody can point to evidence of anything else that might have been the proximate cause.
Early in my career I was interested in engineering thermodynmamics. I keep thinking about the huge amount of energy increase that is now stored in the oceans and accessible to weather systems (that produce high energy storms). I have been in tropical storms in different parts of the world, and the energy associated with these storms is immense. There is going to be a growing amount of human and economic damage as time passes. It is already happening.
I am surprised and disappointed by this Bonner essay ... but in many ways he is only a small part of a bigger problem. It worries me that hardly enyone in the investment world really understands risk ... and students are being taught a very limited perspective on risk. I am comfortable with the idea that you can discount future profit in order to compute a net present value for stock valuation analysis, but doing the same calculation based on the idea that a future cataclysmic effect has a net present cost that is quite low does not make any sense, especially when he economic cost is going to increase inexorably over time.
Peter Burgess
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Should You Worry About Global Warming?
BALTIMORE – Well, it didn’t take investors long…
In less than 24 hours, they figured out that the trade war was fake and the “incredible” deal between President T. and the Chinese at the G20 summit was fake, too. JPMorgan commented:
It doesn’t seem like anything was actually agreed to at the dinner, and White House officials are contorting themselves into pretzels to reconcile Trump’s tweets (which seem, if not completely fabricated, then grossly exaggerated) with reality.
The yield curve flattened on Monday as well (more in today’s Market Insight), signaling another wide divide between the “booming” economy advertised by Wall Street and the sluggish reality on Main Street.
Stocks fell, with the Dow down nearly 800 points by the close of day.
But there’s a long way to go. Our guess is that another 10,000 points will have to be lopped off before the pruning is complete.
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BS Haze
But let’s turn to our subject du jour.
In Europe, people sneer at the “War on Terror.” They think it’s fake. But they jump in the trenches to stop global warming. They may be cynical about fighting terrorism, but they enlist readily in the great cause of environmentalism.
Then, three weeks ago, under the cover of a dense, choking, BS haze, the French feds ordered an attack. They raised the price of gasoline to $6.50 a gallon. Rather than go “over the top” once more, the taxpayers mutinied.
The French government claims the new tax is part of its program to eliminate fossil fuels and “guarantee cheap and clean fuel for France” by 2050.
In America, too, many people think dramatic action is needed. Typical of the comments you see is this (from a discussion forum):
It all boils down to one thing: We simply can’t take the risk of not fighting off climate change now because some people suspect that it might not be real. We must act.
In the normal course of events, you don’t go to the body shop until you’ve wrecked your car. And you don’t go around stuffing corks in everyone’s mouths just in case they may want to spit on the street.
This is a reflection of what colleague Dan Denning calls the “strategic ignorance” of the human race. We never know what will happen… So you wait to find out. “Life is one long struggle in the dark,” said Lucretius, anticipating Dan by about 2100 years.
But there are exceptions. Sometimes humans take action before something awful happens.
Courts issue an injunction in advance of an event on evidence of the “irreparable harm” it may do. The Supreme Court will even set aside the First Amendment and allow the feds to block free speech if it sees “clear and present danger.” That’s why you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater just to see what will happen.
But what about climate change? Is it a “clear and present” danger? Will it do “irreparable harm”? Or do we go with the president’s gut on this one?
Donald J. Trump says he doesn’t believe in global warming. The scientists may have charts and graphs… and studies and hypotheses… But President T. has intestines! From the president to The Washington Post:
…I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.
It must be nice to have such a well-informed digestive tract. But the large intestine is also where a lot of the what-the-trade-deal-turned-out-to-be accumulates.
Still – and here, we rush ahead to a conclusion – we suspect that his instinct is correct, at least insofar as it leads to a policy.
But let’s walk it through…
Controlled Experiment
First, is the earth heating up? We don’t know.
This is something that seems straightforward, the sort of thing scientists should know. But it’s not that clear. Most appear to agree that temperatures are rising. A few dissent. But since it feels warmer to us in the Chesapeake Bay area, we’ll guess that the majority may be correct.
Second, is carbon dioxide – from burning fossil fuels – the cause of it? Again, we don’t know.
The hypothesis has been around for a long time. Alas, there’s no way to know for sure. You can’t do a controlled experiment. There’s only one Earth.
And the observed rate of temperature increase may or may not correspond to increases in carbon dioxide emissions or the predictions made by scientists.
And even if the theoretical/experiential case was airtight, you’re still left with the uncertainty of post hoc ergo propter hoc. (Just because one thing follows another, doesn’t mean the first even caused the second.) If you took away the one (carbon dioxide, for example) you might still get the other (hotter temperatures).
Third, even if you accept the climate change hypothesis to this point – that the world is getting hotter and the sweat is caused by our own carbon dioxide emissions – you still face two major uncertainties…
Field Crops in Greenland
First, is it good or bad? Here, the scientists are powerless to give us an answer. Good and bad are beyond calculation. They are value judgments, much too subtle and too slippery for numbers to compute.
What would it be worth to enjoy a warmer winter in the Great Lakes area? What would more rainfall do to the Sahara?
And rising sea levels sound like bad news for those who own low-lying properties. But our farm, for example, is about 50 feet above sea level. If enough icebergs melt, we might have waterfront property!
Subject to computation, but still not to valuation, is the greening of the planet apparently caused by global warming.
Plants like carbon dioxide. And as carbon dioxide levels increase, so does the amount of vegetation. Crop yields go up. The biomass levels the world can support increase. Grass spreads across the barren steppes. Vines hang heavy with fruit, even in areas that were previously too cold for grapes.
What if we could grow field crops in Greenland, Siberia, and Northern Canada? Would it be worth a tropical storm in Pakistan, a flood in Fort Lauderdale, and an earthquake in the Levant?
What if food prices fell as a result of global warming, so that a million people wouldn’t starve? Would that be worth 500,000 others who’d die from flooding?
If the earth is warming, it will doubtless have some good consequences and some bad ones. We can’t know with any precision or certainty in which direction the balance will tilt, nor can we know whether it’s worth trying to do anything about it.
Which brings us to our second major uncertainty: We can’t know whether our efforts would pay off or do more harm than good.
How much would they cost? Who would bear the expense? Why should peasants in the Himalayas have to pay for protecting millionaires’ beachfront mansions in Miami? Who decides?
A visionary program of this scale and ambition would have to be put in place and carried forward by elites from around the world. Naturally, they are almost all in favor… and are all slathering at the opportunities.
Who will get consulting contracts? Who will own the windmills and solar power plants? Who will benefit from tax credits and government contracts? And who will tell the rest of us what to do in a peremptory and condescending tone?
And like the French, who will take to the streets and set cars on fire?
Regards,
signature
Bill
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