The economics of climate change

I find it worrying that policy makers are rushing headlong into the climate change hype without considering the serious ramifications of what they are doing to us and future generations. Instead of spending (ie. losing) billions on reducing emissions or going for energy sources that are intrinsicallly uneconomic (read inefficient), we should be building wealth to mitigate against any future catastrophe. I know from personal experience how important wealth is to mitigate against what life throws at you - the same principle applies on a global level.
Current approaches include paying billions for wind farms, which are inherently unreliable as a continuous source of power, building solar power stations in the South of Germany (which having lived there I can attest to the fact that the sun is not something you normally see there), funding corn-based ethanol in the US even though it is still considered vastly inefficient, requires imported natural gas to produce, and artificially raises the price of corn, a staple food for many people around the world. Another approach is the use of taxation, which is gaining traction among some economists. This makes very little sense as well. Taxation of energy means that we pay more for everything. Paying more for something that is delivering the same value is equivalent to inflation. Furthermore, the money goes to the government - not exactly the pinnacle of efficiency. What will the government do with the winfall from a fuel tax? Fund more billion dollar roads to nowhere?
A more sensible approach is to build a hedge against a future crisis - and what better hedge than wealth?

Scientific Consensus

Many times before, scientific consensus has proven to be ill founded - sometimes with dangerous ramifications such as Eugenics - which made itself present in the laws of many countries. Today, we are dealing with a new scientific consensus - "climate change". While I'm not disputing the evidence surrounding climate change and I do acknowledge that it might be happening, I find suspicious anything that we have universal agreement and dissenters are treated like blaspheming heretics to be burned at the stake.

Ronald Bailey wrote an excellent article about the problem of consensus which can be found here.

Global warming Redux

Came across this interesting article about global warming. Another reason why we should not rush head-long into any solution that might fix global warming. In the end, we need to weigh the costs of doing something against the costs of doing nothing except mitigating the effects of global warming when or if (a very big if) they happen.

There are some, however that would take a more extreme approach such as building huge sunshades to lower the amount of energy reaching the earth or purposefully polluting our planet with aerosols to block sunlight. Now they do say "as a last resort". This, of course makes it all sound really dire. Reality is that even the worst predictions don't even come close to warranting these sorts of "remedies" but it all makes it sound very exciting.