The US spends 4% of GDP on defence and nicholas stern suggests it will only cost 1% of GDP to tackle AGW?

Question

The U.S. needs to ensure that its armed forces receive sufficient funding. While funding levels should be determined by needs and requirements, they could be established at 4 percent of GDP without harming the U.S. economy.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/feature...

You are forgetting that many countries around the world are already reducing greenhouse gas emissions or are planning to do so with Australia planning a 20% reduction from 1990 levels by 2020 and a 50% reduction by 2050. Australia will do this through efficiency which will actually save money. Australia will also build wind farms and solar arrays. This will cost money but it will be offset by the amount of money generated locally through companies who will generate jobs and internationally by selling the technology and building overseas projects. Roaring 40s an Australian wind power generation company has just built enough wind turbines in China.

Therefore one must consider the cost savings and money generated by clean energy.


http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1654357.htm

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKHKG3131720070210

http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/05/news/companies/deere_wind/index.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1654357.htm

Measures to reduce emissions can, in the main, be achieved at starkly low costs especially when compared with the costs of inaction. Indeed some, such as reducing emissions by 30 per cent from buildings by 2020, actually contribute positively to GDP, said Executive Director Achim Steiner of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) which, together with the World Meteorological Organization, established the IPCC.

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=506&ArticleID=5578&l=en

Answer 1

Yes, you're right.

Campbelp2002 - This plan will reduce global warming enough that we can fairly easily cope with the remainder. It goes into great detail about how much it will reduce global warming, how much that will cost (there actually are a number of scenarios), and how much it will cost to deal with the remaining effects.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,481085,00.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM040507.pdf

It convincingly shows that doing something is way less expensive than doing nothing, even assuming wide error margins for the estimates. . It was developed by hundreds of scientists and economists working together.

watchout - The largest greenhouse gas is water vapor, but it CANNOT cause global warming. Excess water vapor falls out as precipitation. Excess CO2 stays in the atmosphere for many years and causes global warming. More here:

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11652

The wiki article you cite lists a few scientists. But thousands of them support mainstream global warming science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

Answer 2

One more important fact is that by slowing this process down, we are not only risking the consequences from global warming to become worse, but it will also be more expensive and harder to achieve the necessary changes the longer we wait to act.

Suppose the skeptics are wrong, which is unfortunately the most reasonable scenario, then they will thus have contributed to more, and stronger regulations and costs within a few years ahead.

Answer 3

campbelp2002 is correct for the most part.

Even the most aggressive suggestions to curb global warming will have a negligible affect.
And the Global Warming fear mongers admit that!
(read the IPCC report in detail)

Because almost all greenhouse gases occur naturally, it is highly unlikely that humans are the principal cause anyway.

Go here for the data and more info, and for a long list of scientists that believe GW is a natural process:

http://theglobalwarmingtruth.com/

Answer 4

If Nicholas Stern says that then he is wrong. At least if he means totally stopping and even reversing the rise of CO2 in the air he is wrong, because stopping that will take reducing use of coal and oil by 90% and that will cost WAY more than 4% of GDP to do. If "trackling" means doing some token reductions to appease the liberals while having no actual effect on the CO2 levels, then maybe we could do that. But why waste any money at all if the effect will be negligible?

Answer 5

Bob, you are dead wrong about water vapor, it can most definitely cause GW.
What, you think water vapor goes away and doesnt come back?
You're spouting a political slogan than is not scientifically factual.

Read this in detail so you can get a little more educated:
http://mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

And the following sources listed below

Answer 6

i agree, humans should spend less on killing each other and more on protecting the planet. what skeptics forget that it will create jobs and stimulate economic growth.

watchout...
you are forgetting about carbon sinks. most of the CO2 you are talking about is from respiration which needs glucose which comes from the atmosphere originality so it dose not effect atmospheric levels by much.