[Editor note: This November 29, 2011, post is updated in light of the admission yesterday by climate activist Peter Gleick that he is the source of the stolen Heartland Institute documents. Gleick’s malfeasance continues the authoritarian, anti-intellectual behaviors exhibited by neo-Malthusians, most infamously revealed by Climategate, but also including the treatment of the late Julian Simon by Paul Ehrlich.
Updates on what is now being called GleickGate can be found on popular climate websites, including those of Andrew Revkin, Judith Curry, Watts Up With That, Climate Depot, and Climate Audit.]
I read all about it at Judith Curry’s blog (Breaking News: Gleick Confesses) and added this comment (now 250 and counting) at the midnight hour:
Wow–surely Peter Gleick understands that feedback effects are in dispute, and the difference influences the sign of the externality in terms of what some climate economists say (Robert Mendelsohn at Yale, for one).
“[Julian] Simon found that humanity progressed not only by solving immediate problems within the existing institutional framework but also by creatively improving the framework over time. . . . In the short run, members of society adopt localized technical and contractual fixes. In the medium range, they may explore government regulatory policies. In the longer term, they expand the scope and scale of the liberal institutions. These institutions of economic freedom—private property, binding contracts, and the rule of law—improve incentive structures that foster both economic well-being and environmental stewardship.”
– Fred Smith, “Introduction,” in Robert Bradley, Julian Simon and the Triumph of Energy Sustainability (Washington, D.C.: ALEC, 2000), p. 12.
Julian Simon (1932–98) would have been eighty years old today. MasterResource is inspired by his contributions to energy (what he labeled “the master resource”), as well as his open-ended view of human ingenuity (what he called “the ultimate resource”).…
…“The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change.”
– James Hansen, “Climate Forcings in the Industrial Era,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 1998, p. 12753.
“In view of the immense power of natural weather and climate fluctuations and the great buffering capacity of the Earth, especially the ocean, it is easy to be skeptical about whether small anthropogenic changes of atmospheric composition can have important practical impacts.”
– James Hansen et al., “How Sensitive Is the World’s Climate?,” National Geographic Research & Exploration, 9(2): 1993, p. 157.
“Climate is always changing. Climate would fluctuate without any change of climate forcings. The chaotic aspect of climate is an innate characteristic of the coupled fundamental equations describing climate system dynamics.”