“With my characteristic optimism, my 1997 paper on global warming remarked that ‘We should know a lot more about this issue in the next 10 to 20 years.’ Unfortunately, there has been a rush to judgement on this issue without a significant increase in the information on which to base this judgement.”
– William Niskanen, 2008
Part I yesterday presented the key questions regarding the climate-change issue from William Niskanen’s Fall 1997 symposium essay, “Too Much, Too Soon: Is a Global Warming Treaty a Rush to Judgment?” Part II today reprints a lead section from that essay, How Good is the Science of Global Warming? followed by Niskanen’s eleven-year retrospective. I conclude with a brief comment as a twenty-one year retrospective.
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The current debate in the scientific community about global warming is based on only a few hard facts: The current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is nearly 30 percent higher than in pre-industrial times; the average (measured) global temperature has increased about 0.5°C since the 1880s; and the increased concentration of carbon dioxide may have contributed to the increase in temperature. …
Continue Reading“For this treaty to merit our support, the proponents should be asked to demonstrate the accuracy of all of the following statements…. As will be seen below, the case for any one of these statements is surprisingly weak. The case for a global warming treaty, which depends on the accuracy of all of these statements, in shockingly weak.”
– William Niskanen, Fall 1997
“Given the low cost of waiting, it would seem only prudent to continue to try to answer the open questions about climate change before making major changes to Western civilization.”
– Jerry Taylor on Niskanen (above), Winter 1998
In the Fall 1997 issue of JOBS & CAPITAL (Milken Institute), William A. Niskanen, chair of the Cato Institute, published a long essay against regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) via a global treaty (or otherwise).…
Continue Reading[Note: This will be Niskanen Week with forthcoming posts on his views on climate-change science, economics, and public policy. This is particularly relevant with the contradictory policies of the Niskanen Center under its founder and head, Jerry Taylor.]
The longtime chairman of the Cato Institute, William N. Niskanen, passed away in 2011 at age 78. We shared the podium a few times on energy issues, and I admired his Enron project at Cato that resulted in two books, Corporate Aftershock: Lessons from the Collapse of Enron and Other Major Corporations (2003) and After Enron: Lessons for Public Policy (2005).
Like virtually everyone else who knew him, I remember Bill as a scholar and gentleman. He had one tone of voice and reliably imparted insightful logic. He was a scholar’s scholar, a role model for the rest of us.