[tt] NYT: (Lomborg) 'Feel Good' vs. 'Do Good' on Climate

[Premise Checker]

Still, Lomborg does not present any calculation for what the optimal 
temperature of the planet would be.

'Feel Good' vs. 'Do Good' on Climate
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/science/earth/11tiern.html

Findings
By JOHN TIERNEY

After looking at one too many projections of global-warming
disasters computer graphics of coasts swamped by rising seas,
mounting death tolls from heat waves I was ready for a reality
check. Instead of imagining a warmer planet, I traveled to a place
that has already felt the heat, accompanied by Bjorn Lomborg, the
Danish political scientist and scourge of environmentalist
orthodoxy.

It was not an arduous expedition. We went to an old wooden building
near the Brooklyn Bridge that is home to the Bridge Cafe, which
bills itself as New Yorks Oldest Drinking Establishment. Theres
been drinking in the building since the late 18th century, when it
was erected on Water Street along the shore of Lower Manhattan.

Since record-keeping began in the 19th century, the sea level in
New York has been rising about a foot per century, which happens to
be about the same increase estimated to occur over the next century
by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The temperature
has also risen as New York has been covered with asphalt and
concrete, creating an urban heat island thats estimated to have
raised nighttime temperatures by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The warming
that has already occurred locally is on the same scale as whats
expected globally in the next century.

The impact of these changes on Lower Manhattan isnt quite as
striking as the computer graphics. We couldnt see any evidence of
the higher sea level near the Bridge Cafe, mainly because Water
Street isnt next to the water anymore. Dr. Lomborg and I had to
walk over two-and-a-half blocks of landfill to reach the current
shoreline.

The effect of the rising temperatures is more complicated to gauge.
Hotter summer weather can indeed be fatal, as Al Gore likes us to
remind audiences by citing the 35,000 deaths attributed to the 2003
heat wave in Europe. But there are a couple of confounding factors
explained in Dr. Lomborgs new book, Cool It: The Skeptical
Environmentalists Guide to Global Warming.

The first is that winter can be deadlier than summer. About seven
times more deaths in Europe are attributed annually to cold weather
(which aggravates circulatory and respiratory illness) than to hot
weather, Dr. Lomborg notes, pointing to studies showing that a
warmer planet would mean fewer temperature-related deaths in Europe
and worldwide.

The second factor is that the weather matters a lot less than how
people respond to it. Just because there are hotter summers in New
York doesnt mean that more people die in fact, just the reverse has
occurred. Researchers led by Robert Davis, a climatologist at the
University of Virginia, concluded that the number of heat-related
deaths in New York in the 1990s was only a third as high as in the
1960s. The main reason is simple, and evident as you as walk into
the Bridge Cafe on a warm afternoon: air-conditioning.

The lesson from our expedition is not that global warming is a
trivial problem. Although Dr. Lomborg believes its dangers have
been hyped, he agrees that global warming is real and will do more
harm than good. He advocates a carbon tax and a treaty forcing
nations to budget hefty increases for research into low-carbon
energy technologies.

But the best strategy, he says, is to make the rest of the world as
rich as New York, so that people elsewhere can afford to do things
like shore up their coastlines and buy air conditioners. He calls
Kyoto-style treaties to cut greenhouse-gas emissions a mistake
because they cost too much and do too little too late. Even if the
United States were to join in the Kyoto treaty, he notes, the cuts
in emissions would merely postpone the projected rise in sea level
by four years: from 2100 to 2104.

We could spend all that money to cut emissions and end up with more
land flooded next century because people would be poorer, Dr.
Lomborg said as we surveyed Manhattans expanded shoreline. Wealth
is a more important factor than sea-level rise in protecting you
from the sea. You can draw maps showing 100 million people flooded
out of their homes from global warming, but look at whats happened
here in New York. Its the same story in Denmark and Holland weve
been gaining land as the sea rises.

Dr. Lomborg, whos best known (and most reviled in some circles) for
an earlier book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, runs the
Copenhagen Consensus Center, which gathers economists to set
priorities in tackling global problems. In his new book, he
dismisses the Kyoto emissions cuts as a feel-good strategy because
it sounds virtuous and lets politicians make promises they dont
have to keep. He outlines an alternative do-good strategy that
would cost less but accomplish more in dealing with climate change
as well as more pressing threats like malaria, AIDS, polluted
drinking water and malnutrition.

If youre worried about stronger hurricanes flooding coasts, he
says, concentrate on limiting coastal development and expanding
wetlands right now rather than trying to slightly delay warming
decades from now. To give urbanites a break from hotter summers,
concentrate on reducing the urban-heat-island effect. If cities
planted more greenery and painted roofs and streets white, he says,
they could more than offset the impact of global warming.

The biggest limitation to his cost-benefit analyses is that no one
knows exactly what global warming will produce. It may not be worth
taking expensive steps to forestall a one-foot rise in the sea
level, but what if the seas rise much higher? Dr. Lomborgs critics
argue that we owe it to future generations to prepare for the
worst-case projections.

But preparing for the worst in future climate is expensive, which
means less money for the most serious threats today and later this
century. You can imagine plenty of worst-case projections that have
nothing to do with climate change, as Dr. Lomborg reminded me at
the end of our expedition.

No historian would look back at the last two centuries and rank the
rising sea level here as one of the citys major problems, he said,
sitting safely dry and cool inside the Bridge Cafe. I dont think
our descendants will thank us for leaving them poorer and less
healthy just so we could do a little bit to slow global warming. Id
rather we were remembered for solving the other problems first.