August 4, 2010
Economic Snapshot
Don’t sweat climate change, Nobel Prize-winning physicist says
JOHN CLINKARD
consulting economist, CanaData
The construction industry is a major energy consumer. Given recent concerns about the significant potential impact of carbon taxes and/or cap and trade legislation on all energy consumers, it is useful to try and get some perspective on the world’s current “hot” button issue: climate change.
In the current issue of The American Scholar, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert B. Laughlin suggests that the earth is much more resilient than many give it credit for.
The earth has suffered major volcanic explosions, floods, earthquakes and meteor impacts over time, and yet we know, given our survival, that it survived.
Despite this evidence of the earth’s resilience, though, many fear that carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion will raise the earth’s temperature and ultimately render it uninhabitable.
Laughlin highlights a couple of problems with this outlook.
First, forecasts, even those made by computers, are highly subjective, he says. They frequently extrapolate the past.
A major problem that climatologists face is the inability to separate the effects of climate change from those of normal multi-year weather events such as El Nino and the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that, according to Laughlin, “you can’t find much actual global warming in present-day weather observations.”
Over the last several million years, the earth has exhibited major episodes of natural climate change.
These periods of glacial cooling took place at regular 100,000-year intervals and were characterized by a period of slow cooling following an abrupt warming of conditions similar to the present day.
According to Laughlin’s research, the last “natural” glacial melting occurred 15,000 years ago and required 10 times the amount of energy currently being consumed globally.
Were the earth determined to freeze Canada, he notes, it would probably be a good idea to move south, and if Greenland’s glaciers were to melt, it would be best to move inland.
Thus climate ought not to concern us, “not because it is unimportant but because it’s beyond our power to control.
Note: The views expressed here are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of Daily Commercial News or Reed Construction Data.
John Clinkard has over 30 years’ experience as an economist in international, national and regional research and analysis with leading financial institutions and media outlets in Canada.
800 to 1992 (25-year moving average)
Data source: NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA
Chart: Reed Construction Data – CanaData.
