A lecture to the Young Americans Foundation on the scientific, economic and political aspects of global warming

1. GLOBAL WARMING Science, economics, ethics Iain Murray MA MBA DIC Senior Fellow Competitive Enterprise Institute Presentation to YAF July 9 2007

2. The Science What do we know? What don’t we know?

4. Global warming isn’t global

5. Temperature is Trendy

6. E.G.: What About those Polar Bears?

7. Warmer than it was in 1880

8. But colder than it was in 1934

9. Is Warming Man-made? All things being equal, yes …but are other things equal?

10. Scientific Understanding is Lower than You Might Think

11. Significant Room for Doubt

12. Is Current Warming Unusual? We Can’t Be Sure

13. Abrupt Changes in the Earth’s Climate Measured in Central Greenland Over the Last 17,000 Years Paleo Temperatures & Snowfall - After Cuffey and Clow 1997 / Alley 2000 -25 -30 -35 -40 -45 -50 -55 -60 0.35 0.30 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05 Temperature (°C) Accumulation (m ice/year) 0 5 10 15 Age (thousand years before present) Little Ice Age 400-150 BP Medieval Warm Period 800-1300 YBF Temperature 1000K Hunters & Gathers Pottery NA Plant Domestication Birch and Conifer Widespread Tree Growth (Pollen) 2 - 4°C Low CO 2 Sparse Vegetation Dry Africa Dry Tundra Plants ~6-7°C Eastern Canada Snowfall El Nino Begins 5300 • Iceman of The Alps 1500 Year Spacing 8200 Cooling Event World Wide 1st Dynasty of Egypt • Bronze Age Early Domestication of Plants? Squash Animal and Plant Domestication (Near East) Abrupt Iron Age Corn and Beans Younger Dryas Cooling Steps Widespread Forests Languages Develop Americas Almaty, Kazakastan (Father of Apples) Coffee in Ethopia Tigris & Euphrates Allerod Warm

14. Recent history – the traditional view IPCC, 1990

15. The Hockey Stick IPCC 2001

16. Recent re-analyses Burger & Cubasch 2005

18. How much more warming can we expect? Probably less than they tell us

19. IPCC projections – NOT predictions

20. Scenarios

21. The Models Are Essentially Linear

22. Data – the Modeler’s Burden

23. Models vs Data

24. Famine, Flood and Pestilence What do we know?

29. The Economics Cost and Benefits

30. Demand for Fossil Fuels is Rising IEA World Energy Outlook

31. And Most of the Demand Comes from the Developing World IEA World Energy Outlook

32. The Developed World is Not the Problem

33. And the Problem Will Only Get Worse Lomborg 2001 from Wigley 1998

35. The Ineffectiveness of Kyoto-Lite 0.012 8,907 NCEP Total Package 0.029 21,275 S.A. 2028 0.04 31,299 S. 139 0.07 50,513 Kyoto Constant GW Avoided 2050 (deg C) Tons GHG Reduced Scenario GHG Emissions and Global Warming Avoided Lewis, 2005

39. So What Do We Do? The Ethical Solution

41. POPULATION AT RISK, WITH & WITHOUT CLIMATE CHANGE for 1990 and 2080s

42. Comparing Mitigation v. Adaptation

45. “ If we cut carbon, we’ll make money!” The free lunch argument