[C]limate estimates sponsored by the United Nations foresee average temperatures rising by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

Very unlikely.
That must be the "catastrophic" scenario.
Although, it would make Canada habitable.

Two degrees, at most, seems much more likely.

[U]se of nuclear weapons would create a beneficial winterizing effect.

FINALLY you come around. You clung so fiercely to the absurd notion that total nuclear war would have no knock-on effects that I wondered if there was some emotional trauma that you associated with "nuclear winter".

Soooo . . . if we ratify Kyoto! and reduce our greenhouse gas an particle emissions as it requires, it will accelerate global warming and destroy life as we know it. But, if we fail to ratify Kyoto! and don't reduce pollution, it will accelerate global warming and destroy life as we know it.

Kinda hard to decide what to do if you put it that way.

Look at it this way, Mike: We can be rich and hot, or poor and hot. Somewhat easier to make that decision.

Actually Kyoto would make us richer, via the economic growth, productivity, and efficiency from plant upgrades. Though it might kill us faster.

That's a billion hours detention for you. Write this on the blackboard 100 billion times: "Kyoto will not make us richer." Then clap out the erasers and you can go home.

All we really need is a sunshade at the Earth-Sun L1. That's an effort that would not only be far cheaper than the Kyoto Protocols, but would have much larger attendant economic benefits.

P.S. Here's a nice post on New Zealand getting the bill for Kyoto Protocols. Surprisingly, the estimates put out by the government during the run up to joining the KP turned out to be more than a bit low. How odd!

joe:

It's just y2k redux.

AOG,
Thanks for the link! Didn't get me to the NZ post but did provide two new titles for me: Chatterati and Caliphacists. Nice ring.

Would like to read the NZ post though.

Mr. Judd;

Not, quite the opposite of the Y2K episode. Y2K was organized and driven from the private / business side, while the KP is a government project. One need only compare the track records of these two types of projects to see the difference.

It needn't be organized. Just driven.

This is OJ's version of the broken window fallacy.

At this point it's more like the broken record fallacy.

David:

The broken window fallacy is untrue because you only replace a window with a window. If you required replacing them with the new thermally efficient ones it would be worthwhile to break the old ones.

As the political positions coming out of this blog beciome increasingly indistinguishable from those of Vassar-educated lesbian ecofeminists, I wonder who's running it now, and what they did with the real Orrin Judd. Probably should have asked when "OJ" advocated abolishing the CIA.
Oj, you really need to start washing the pesticide off the weed before you smoke it. If Kyoto would be good on business grounds, businesses wouldn't need to be compelled to adopt the Kyoto measures; they'd already be doing it voluntarily.
But if you still disagree, just tell me your (physical) address, and I'll be happy to take a large rock and help you increase the efficiency of your house, Kyoto style.

Tom: The key to the blog is that OJ is a Republican leftist. If you suspend your disbelief that far, everything else makes sense.

OJ: The broken window fallacy is wrong because it ignores opportunity costs.

Opportunity costs is a fallacy because it assumes businesses will do something better with the money.

Tom:

Businessmen aren't going to pay to reduce pollution if they can pay for a party instead.

Tom: See?

Doomed ... we're all doomed!

David - Yes, that last exchange illustrates your point nicely.

By the way, I just re-read what I wrote last night and was surprised at how angry it sounds. I was actuially just joking.

However, OJ does need to decide whether to just join the Socialist Party and make it official, LOL.

Tom:

Government bureaucrats are worse than business bureaucrats, who at least need to try and turn a profit.

There ya are!

Pretty low bar.

Try and turn a profit when they're not busy throwing a party, you mean.

Well, if there are no profits people get nervous. Luckily you can have the party and cook the books--best of both worlds!

You're getting closer to that pebble, grasshopper. Of course the ROI numbers on Y2K are completely trustworthy. I'm sure Kyoto's will be as well, right?

Economic numbers are never right. Just impose new standards and let business meet them any way it can. You'll get the desired result.

If you impose standards, you don't have a free market.

The broken window theory cannot be invoked, either way, until you account for any borrowing against the future you may be doing.

David's caution about opportunity costs captures part of that, but not all.

Harry:

There are no free markets.

"You get the desired result." What if the result isn't desired?

Harry: I don't see anything there that isn't captured by "opportunity costs."

Then you don't do it.

David: The 'desired result' in this case is that the U.S. economy grow less, so technically oj's right.

I think Harry means that the term "opportunity cost" only considers the actor, or in other words it doesn't account for externalities, such as borrowing from (others in) the future. It's not wrong to desire that accounting, but you really can't account, you can only estimate; and Kyoto's Exhibit A for how well that's likely to go.

No, it grows more, because--even separate from the money spent to meet the new standards--as with Y2K it forces modernization of outdated equipment with resulting gains in efficiency and productivity.

"Pretty low bar."

One must make allowances.