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JoNova ignores cost benefit studies. What studies?

In a letter in The Australian Tom Biegler claims JoNova didn’t look at cost benefit studies:

Joanne Nova [Wasting money on Climate betrays the sick] bemoans the lack of cost-benefit analysis to support a price on carbon. She didn’t look very far. The energy economics literature is awash with estimates of the cost of both climate change and abatement measures. They disagree of course, but so would cost-benefit analyses of medical research expenditures, which Nova ignores.

A world where governments spent our money purely on the basis of cost-benefit assessments might look appealing but it’s not going to happen. Priorities reflect what voters want, annoying as that may be. It’s a small price to pay for our wonderful democracy that lets us keep arguing and trying to change each other’s minds.

Tom Biegler, St Kilda East, Vic

My reply sent to The Australian yesterday:

Tom Biegler thinks I’ve ignored cost benefit analysis of climate change abatement. No sir. There are no cost benefit analysis that start with checking the science. No institute or government committee has been paid to audit the IPCC, the BOM or CSIRO’s findings. All the reports assume that the UN favored climate models are right. And those climate models assume that humidity and clouds amplify CO2’s effect by a whopping factor of three, but their results don’t fit measurements of the real world by 28,000,000 weather balloons, 30 years of satellites, or 3,000 ocean buoys. Hence, if CO2 has a minor effect, the cost benefit of cutting carbon is easy to work out: it’s all cost, and no benefit.

Joanne Nova

The cost benefit studies assume the world will warm, and assume that CO2 plays a major role, so there has never been a cost-benefit study that analyzed the “benefits” of cutting CO2 by starting with the science.

But in hindsight, what was I thinking?!

We can show the cost-benefit studies are barking mad even if the “science” was right. Let’s assume the UN committee and their 75 favourite scientists are 100% correct, and that all their projections are spot-on. There are still exactly no benefits to the Australian community in lowering Australian emissions with solar panels, pink batts, or 2 billion fluorescent globes. Let’s all say it together… If we abandon Australia entirely, and reduce our CO2 emissions by 100%, we prevent 0.0154C of global warming*.

How can anyone justify taking one dollar from medical research to fund that?

*By 2050. See Carbon Tax Australia? Welcome to Futility Island for details.

PS: If you are new to this line of thinking, or this site — the page to start is here.

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