Behind the IPCC Curtain: the Costs of Climate Mitigation Policy

By Mark Krebs -- October 18, 2018

“Financing the IPCC’s conclusions via carbon taxes would bankrupt even the wealthiest countries; even at the low end of the IPCC estimates…. Alas, we have to destroy the global economy to save it.”

The 48th session of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change convened from 1-5 October 2018, in Incheon, Republic of Korea. On Oct. 6, 2018 the UN’s IPCC modified downward the Paris Agreement goal of a maximum 1.5 deg. C rise requiring net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The following day, the IPCC released its voluminous “special report” shown by the following screenshot:

Source: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/

The report went to great lengths estimating the environmental costs of climate change and the benefits (including economic benefits) from implementing their “findings,” but never analyzed the economic costs. In fact, Chapter 1 of the IPCC special report said this about economic cost/benefit analyses (p.…

World Health Organization: Wind Turbine Noise as a Health Hazard (opening recognition likely to lead to more acknowledgement)

By Sherri Lange -- October 17, 2018

“The wind industry has denied and ignored evidence directly linking wind turbines and sleep disruption leading to negative human and animal impacts worldwide. Expect WHO’s new Guidelines to give rise to new standards to mitigate if not eliminate this ongoing suffering.”

“The burden of environmental noise with wind turbines is not episodic or random: for the most part its effects are constant and unrelenting…. This is an undeniable health pressure of enormous magnitude.”

Abstract: While only “conditional,” acknowledgement is given to pulsation (impulsive amplitude modification, as Steven Cooper calls it) and ILFN (Infra and Low Frequency Noise), the new World Health Organization report underscores the failure of current regulations of dB to manage health impacts from industrial wind installations worldwide.

The other irrefutable conclusion is that the wind industry has been given a regulatory path to profits with an unfathomable license to hurt in the form of sleep deprivation (and associated disease) for a very long time. …

“Population Bombed”: Interview with Pierre Desrochers (new book out today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 16, 2018

“I have applied Simon’s framework to the issue of climate change, although my historical perspective allowed me to see more of the forest rather than obsess about a few trees. Try as I might, I just cannot ignore the unique and large-scale benefits brought to humanity by the ever increasing use of carbon fuels (e.g., from longer lives and better health to cleaner air and water, more abundant food and reforestation).”

Yesterday, Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak, summarized their new book, Population Bombed! Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change. Today, MasterResource is pleased to interview Professor Desrochers about his latest book.

Q. In his 1981 classic, The Ultimate Resource, Julian Simon decoupled population growth from resource depletion, rising pollution, food supply, and other popularly believed barriers to progress.…