November 22, 2010 
This post on Climate Etc. got me thinking about one of the most-oft repeated mantras of the more paranoid part of the denialist crowd — that global warming is just a big hoax by statists hoping to enlarge social control, create one world government, increase taxes and other scary things. Punkster is an example of this group as anyone familiar with his posts on this blog can attest.
According to this group of fantasists hysterics skeptics/contrarians, global warming is a hoax perpetrated by socialists hoping to beggar the developed world and enrich the developing world by creating one world order OMG!!!112.
Here’s the post at Climate Etc. by Douglas Chang, which excerpts Noel Sheppard’s article in NZZ:
Douglas Chang | November 18, 2010 at 8:01 pm | Reply
“BREAKING: UN IPCC Official Admits ‘We Redistribute World’s Wealth By Climate Policy’By Noel Sheppard | November 18, 2010 | 11:27
If you needed any more evidence that the entire theory of man-made global warming was a scheme to redistribute wealth you got it Sunday when a leading member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told a German news outlet, “[W]e redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”
Such was originally published by Germany’s NZZ Online Sunday, and reprinted in English by the Global Warming Policy Foundation moments ago:
(NZZ AM SONNTAG): The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.
(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.
(NZZ): That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.
(EDENHOFER): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet – and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 – there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.
(NZZ): De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.
(EDENHOFER): First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.
For the record, Edenhofer was co-chair of the IPCC’s Working Group III, and was a lead author of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report released in 2007 which controversially concluded, “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”
As such, this man is a huge player in advancing this theory, and he has now made it quite clear – as folks on the realist side of this debate have been saying for years – that this is actually an international economic scheme designed to redistribute wealth.”
Here is the entire article in translation:
So the claim is that policy intended to address climate change is not really meant to address global warming, but redistribute wealth.
Of course, they have it all wrong. Backwards.
Denialists who propagate this misrepresentation imply that the purpose of climate legislation is really economic redistribution, to transfer wealth, to destroy America, to make China and India rich.
No — the purpose is to salvage our climate by ensuring that when the developing world industrializes as we have, they don’t finish what we started, sending our climate into potential destabilization.
Hmm. (hamster wheels in brain turn) Of course global warming policy is ultimately economic policy! Global warming is the result of our economic development, and in particular, our use of fossil fuels to power our industrial globalized civilization!
It’s the economy stupid!
Here’s more:
Nevertheless, the environment is suffering from climate change – especially in the global south.
It will be a lot to do with adaptation. But that just goes far beyond traditional development policy: We will see in Africa with climate change a decline in agricultural yields. But this can be avoided if the efficiency of production is increased – and especially if the African agricultural trade is embedded in the global economy. But for that we need to see that successful climate policy requires other global trade and financial policies.
The great misunderstanding of the UN summit in Rio in 1992 is repeated in the climate policy: the developed countries talk about environment, the developing countries about development.
It is even more complicated. In the 1980s, our local environmental problems were luxury problems for the developing countries. If you already fed and own a car, you can get concerned about acid rain. For China, the problem was how to get 600 million Chinese people in the middle class. Whether there was a coal power plant or whether the labour standards in the coal mines were low was second priority – as it was here in the 19th Century.
But the world has become smaller.
Now something new happens: it is no longer just our luxury, our environment. Developing countries have realized that causes of climate change lie in the north and the consequences in the south. And in developed countries, we have realized that for a climate protection target of two degrees neither purely technical solutions nor life style change will be sufficient. The people here in Europe have the grotesque idea that shopping in the bio food store or electric cars will solve the problem. This is arrogant because the ecological footprint of our lifestyle has increased in the last 30 years, despite the eco-movement.
Ah, there’s the crux: we in the developed world have created the environmental problem with our economic development. We desequestered all that carbon in order to raise ourselves up to this current level of wealth and development. The consequence is the injection into the atmosphere of enough CO2 to warm the global climate and send us on a path to a new warmer climate in the near future — and possible climate destabilization.
The developing world wants what we have. I don’t blame them. It’s good, even though it’s been nothing but a big ponzi scheme. They want our wealth and our development levels. To get it, or at least, to get it the way we did, would not be good for the environment and our civilization. Without intervention, there is a very good possibility that the developing world will rely on the most polluting forms of fossil fuels — coal, shale oil, tar sands, further acidifying the oceans and increasing GHGs to double, triple or more what they were pre-industrialization.
If we want to prevent the climate from destabilizing, we have to reduce the amount of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere. This can be done in a number of ways — carbon taxes, cap and trade, switching to alternatives, finding clean fossil fuel technology, etc. If we are to limit the use of fossil fuels, this could deny the developing world the chance to industrialize and enjoy the benefits of the lifestyle we in the developed world take for granted. To convince them not to follow our path, we have to offer incentives and provide technology and aid to ensure they can develop in a carbon neutral or carbon-limited manner. One of the consequences of some policies to address global warming is that the developing world will receive a transfer of wealth which effectively — de facto — transfers wealth from us to them.
When you think of it from an ethical position, it makes sense. We in the developed world “expropriated the atmosphere” and dumped all our waste CO2 into it without a thought to the consequences. We have to pony up if we want to prevent the developing world, which is so much more populous than us, from making a bad situation much much worse by being as reckless as we have.
So, yes, some of the policies recommended to address global warming will result in the de facto transfer of wealth from the developed world to the developing world.
The key to remember is that “de facto”, or “in consequence”, is to be differentiated from “de jure”, which means “imposed by law”. In other words, the policies / legislation / regulations are meant to mitigate global warming but a consequence of these laws is a transfer of wealth.
So Bjorn Lomborg doesn’t need to worry about the developing nations — by enacting legislation to mitigate global warming, we will lift up the developing world so that they have all the benefits of our lifestyle but without the CO2…
The Policy Lass 
You’re complete right that they’ve got it backward, Susann. It is obvious to any objective observer that Edenhofer tells us that the result of climate policy will be a wealth distribution. It is NOT obvious to any objective observer that the wealth distribution is thus the *reason* for the climate policy.
Note also that Edenhofer points to potential problems: can countries cope with suddenly getting so much money?
If you were “asked” to create catalyst on a planet with thought forms needing to “work off” their karmic tail and you knew of a naturally occurring cycle that heated up that planet every 26,000 yrs (approx.) wouldn’t you use that information as a catalyst?
You’re not Jasmine, are you?
Buenos Dias, Amigos para Cancun!
Hey, Shewonk, just thought I’d stop by and see how’s hangin’! I miss our little case studies in logical fallacies and metacognitive befuddlements.
I see you still have absolutely no hard evidence to offer for El Grande hypothesio de Catastrofica Anthropogenica Global Warming (CAGW) as a existential threat to civilization…
Not that it really matters. Who needs evidence? You gotta have faith! Trust us. That’s YOUR mantra. The science is settled. Forever. Case closed.
Ironically, what fuels rabid speculation that the politics of expanding government, limiting individual liberty and property rights are the animating forces behind the CAGW meme is rhetoric like your post above!
After all, you simply assume it is an established fact that the world faces a climate apocalypse. You deny Climategate, Hockey-Stick-gate and all the IPCC fraud, etc. Plus you totally deny every bit of evidence that refutes the parts of AGW science not already embroiled in scandal. Case closed. Whew, glad the debate is over, now we can get on with Saving The Planet!
Then with a straight face announce the only Shining Path available forward To Save The Planet from a Climate Apocalypse is more central government command of our lives and the separation of our money from our wallets to fund grand wealth redistribution schemes dreamed up by a powerful global elite of unelected faceless technocrats. Roll Over, Orwell!
Hmmm, maybe if you was really worried about an apocalypse you might have mentioned the one and only thing that could actually lower humanity’s use of fossil fuels today? Say it with me, with a Texas accent— Nuu- Cuu -Laar Energy.
Nope. No Nukes. It’s definitely authoritarian Green global socialism that will save our doomed planet.
The only thing that keeps me from becoming paranoid is the amazing Dunning-Kruger Effect of the Warmist power brokers. They’re simply too incompetent to manage a proper conspiracy. It would be all over Wikileaks by now.
…But my Margharita is rapidly warming, hey, it must be something in the atmosphere!
Hasta La Vista, Amigos!
Can you say Nuuuuuuculaar?
Wes, your post speaks for itself.
Oh and BTW, I support nuclear power, so oops, there goes one plank in your rickety simplistic theory…
Susann
Whistling past the graveyard, wes. It’s obvious that it’s not the scientifically-literate you’re capering for.
But thanks for stopping by – there are few things funnier than a rightwad imagining that he’s being funny. He’s right, but not for the reasons he thinks.
Come Quickly lord jesus!.
I think Wes just scared him away. Your conspiracy website will not have helped much either…
Aren’t the Illuminati/NWO supposed to kill off the majority of the global population? What better way than with AGW, top soil erosion, ocean acidification, unhealthy food, peak everything, resource wars, etc?
So Shewonk is pro-nukes? Ay Carumba!
So why didn’t ella mention Nuclear energy as one of the ways to save the planet from the coming climate apocalypse? Que pasa? No lo entiendo.
At this point in the history of technology, Nuclear energy is the ONLY possible hope for humanity to significantly reduce CO2 emissions. Si, lo creo que Shewonk’s moral posturing and grand command-control schemes to re-order the global economy are far more “empowering” than the boring natural technological evolutionary path we are already well along.
But before we get too excited about saving the planet from evil carbon pollution, let’s look at the basic facts: Humans add about 7 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year. OMG! That’s so much pollution! Well, not so much, considering Mother Nature adds about 220 billions tons of carbon “pollution” to the equation each year too. So our human addition to the climate is about 3% of the total.
Unfortunately for anyone eagerly awaiting the climate apocalypse, the warming effect caused by CO2 is logarithmic. In other words the first 20ppm of CO2 accounted for HALF of ALL the warming effect of the 390 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere today.
You could double the amount of CO2 to 800ppm and get less than another 0.2c of warming. This inconvenient fact is accepted by both sides of the debate. (of course, to double to CO2 in the atmosphere will take at least another century assuming zero techno-social evolution, which we might just achieve should we follow Shewonk’s brand of socio-economic wowserism.)
So the warmists have to “hope” that water vapour increases due to warming have a super positive feedback on warming to achieve a the fabled climate apocalypse. That’s the only way to get the 3c to 6c of warming necessary for catastrophic disruption.
Yet there is little evidence for positive water vapour feedback, in fact new satellite data seems to show a negative water vapour feedback on global temperature. So the 20th century global warming might well have caused a global increase in water vapour (clouds) and thus the early 21st century cooling we seem to be experiencing.
That’s the beauty of Gaia…It’s a self-regulating nonlinear complex system of entangled homeostatic feedback loops, highly resilient, capable of absorbing the shock of super volcanism and asteroid impacts, so an extra 3% CO2 per year input for a few decades is nothing to a billion year old planetary system. Besides, if water vapour had a strong positive feedback on warming the history of earth would be radically different from what we know.
Certainly, there is no evidence that we face a climate apocalypse unless humanity radically reorganizes the world’s economy at Cancun.
And that’s exactly what is freaking rational people out!
When a bunch of wealthy NGOs, the UN and career warmists develop a grand quixotic scheme in which THEY just happen to install THEMSELVES in control the Earth’s climate by appropriating private property and limiting civil liberties to establish a command economy based on rationing, well, yeah, some people are gonna to think the fake climate apocalypse scare is just cover for what self-righteous, authoritarian statists have wanted since the days of Das Capital. Just sayin’.
And Shewonk’s post, by not mentioning a single one of the real cures for “carbon pollution” implies her true agenda is something other than saving the planet, whether she is consciously aware of that is an entirely different order of question….
Gotta run… it’s cocktail hour here in Cancun! Yeeeee HAaaww! 😉
I’m in good company — Dr. James Hansen supports nuclear power as well. He supports next generation nuclear power as an option, and feels that if the US fails to develop this new tech, it will lose out economically, as other nations are willing to take the lead.
You see, Wes, you think you have it all — and us all — figured out. Think again.
The rest of your post is just not worth the effort.
Wes, so many errors and distortions in so few words, it is amazing. Everyone knows that nature is currently a net SINK of CO2. Those who do not know this are either willfully blind or mathematically challenged (as in primary school challenged). Which one is it in your case, Wes?
Or take the claim that doubling CO2 will only add 0.2 degrees and that everyone agrees. Sorry, mate, but only Lindzen may agree with that one, after invoking major amounts of negative feedbacks he keeps on trying to prove by ‘massaging’ his data (LC09 is a poster child of highly questionable data picking and analysis, far worse than anything Mike Mann supposedly ever did, but somehow never has led to the same type of attack). Climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 is 2-4.5 degrees.
Oh, and care to explain the PETM if climate sensitivity is so much lower? Or any of the glacial-interglacial cycles? Heck, what about the climate on earth many hundred millions of years ago? Surely, those days of warmer climate are completely impossible WITHOUT a high climate sensitivity!
Ah, but Wes will come back with a few handwaves and run away again…
“Oh, and care to explain the PETM if climate sensitivity is so much lower?”
Cheap-shot posturing, given that the PETM is still a much-contested and poorly understood event that hasn’t really been ‘explained’ by anyone. We don’t even know what caused it.
And that’s what bothers me about so much of the science that is touted in this debate. We are dealing with an area in which there are no directly observable facts and no possible control. We are left with inferences drawn from proxies and modelled outcomes rooted in theoretical assumptions.
So we have statements like “climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling IS blah”. It’s a silly, casual use of the word ‘is’, when any rational position would have to be: “climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling COULD be blah… dependent on a huge array of factors, the interactions between which are poorly understood, if at all”.
But there we are: that kind of thing just won’t wash in the policy arena, which demands easy certainties and finds them in the mouths of proselytisers.
Truth: we should be hedging our bets that the climate will change in the future, as it always has done, one way or another. If our activities are perhaps helping a tendency to warming, we’d better understand how we can mitigate the effects by improving water supplies, infrastructure, building practices and the distribution of medicine. It would be infinitely saner than pretending we can stymie the growth of China, India, Brazil etc.
Instead we have the farcical, Swiftian scene of people negotiating the future temperature rise of the planet. We had John Prescott, who couldn’t even cut traffic levels in his own country by 10%, proclaiming that some bit of paper could limit future temperature rises of the entire planet to under 2%!
You can be as certain as you like about the rationality of this (and I know there isn’t even the merest ghost of a chance of you modifying your position) but the future will laugh at this as surely as we laugh at stack heels and draylon.
(I can’t resist noting that – even if we accept that PETM was a usable model of climate reacting to CO2 – the explosion of mammalian life that it presaged hardly makes me scared that we’re all going to die, but hey – policy wonks have got so much right down the years that I guess I’ll bow to someone else’s greater vision).
Carps, there is a whole range of evidence that puts climate sensitivity to AT LEAST 2 degrees Celsius. The only ‘evidence’ against keeps on getting shot down by the ‘evidence’ coming from shoddy analysis (such as Lindzen & Choi 2009).
That the PETM is somehow “contested”…wow, quite an unsubstantiated claim. There is massive evidence for the PETM, ranging from fossiles to 18O to foraminifera to ratios of organic compounds. We may not known yet what caused it, but we do know that greenhouse gases must be involved to sustain warmer temperatures for so long.
Finally, hardly anyone claims “we’re all going to die”. The vast majority is pointing out that it will be “life, but not as we know it”. The PETM shows that, with mass extinction of benthic foraminiferi and likely dwarfism induced in land-based species. But do remember that the projected temperature increases with BAU are at least a factor 10 if not 100 faster than at the PETM. You’re putting a lot of faith on evolution being able to keep up…
Even stronger… we know what caused PETM, it was the injection of a massive blob of carbon into the atmosphere, as has been well established, e.g.:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v401/n6755/full/401775a0.html
Now where the blob came from, is a different story…
There were no directly observable “facts” about atoms or the causes of radiation either. There were theories, equations, models and a very small group of scientists but there was enough science to create a bomb based on non-observable facts …
Susann
Loosely related, but I found this comment from an acquaintance of mine to be mildly amusing in its implications.
“Well for starters bill S510 is a bill rammed in by big agriculture to destroy non-monoploly food producers and if it passes, it will be used in conjunction wth the illegal Geoengineering Aerosol program the government is currently using to “soft-kill” the population of US citizens and destroy Non-GMO food pruduction by use of aluminum/barium/titanium heavy metal particulates in the atmosphere. After they destroy non-GMO food production, they then sell genetically engineered seeds and corner the market with their monopoly . Sounds crazy extreme right, well it is happening and if you dont believe it, then watch this link all the way through and see for yourself.”
Youtube video link removed 🙂 Perhaps I need some new acquaintances. These people are everywhere, though.
“…global warming is just a big hoax by statists hoping to enlarge social control…”
It is. John Tyndall launched the hoax in 1859, when he purported to have found CO2 and “coal gases” can absorb thermal radiation. Ridiculous! But, before his nonsense measurements could be rightfully ridiculed, he organized a secret cabal to propagate the idea through all time. And so it has happened, even onto this day…
Wait a minute. I need to post this on DenialDepot! They let the true truth shine throughout the world!
clingon
Yeah, I keep posting comments, to the effect that Al Gore and his minions obviously have a time machine, so they can include Tyndall, Fourier and Arrhenius in the great conspiracy.
Great blog, Policy Lass. My first visit won’t be my last. Have added you to my blog roll.
Carps
“even if we accept that PETM was a usable model of climate reacting to CO2 – the explosion of mammalian life that it presaged hardly makes me scared that we’re all going to die”
Sure. Makes you wonder what forms of life would be presaged by another great dying off, doesn’t it? As far as I know, 250 million years ago, there were not 6 billion humans dependent on modern technology and infrastructure as well as modern agriculture, much of which is located on coastal plains. We are not nomadic hunter gatherers, who can pick up our tents and move on. Then there’s the other obvious aspect that deniers never seem to be able to grasp. It’s the rate of change that is so dangerous.