Contingencies Online - September/October 2009

Reassuring
the Reinsurers

TAI keeps Insurers & Reinsurers Connected

through the flow of information!

                 

                                   

 

    

                                           

             

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Wait and See

;n response to Susan Woerner’s defense of global warming alarm (“Managing the Risk of Climate Change,” July/August), I did a Google search of “man-made CO2” and came up with the fact that man-made CO2 makes up only about 0.1 percent of the earth’s greenhouse gas, with water vapor and clouds making up 95 percent of greenhouse gas.

Recall that the prime focus of proposed cap-and-trade legislation is a man-made CO2 reduction of 80 percent by 2050. How a reduction from 0.1 percent to 0.02 percent will prevent global warming is a mystery that needs further explaining. No one doubts the greenhouse theory. What’s in doubt is how 0.1 percent of greenhouse gases can be producing all this catastrophic global warming.

Regarding the huge expense in trying to prevent a possible disaster some hundreds of years in the future, more compelling evidence is needed to justify reducing worldwide gross domestic product by a trillion dollars a year. Also, why would the U.S. propose a unilateral disarmament of its economy as a symbol to the rest of the world, especially when China is building coal-fired energy plants at the rate of two a week to feed its expanding economy? Neither India nor Mexico has intentions of helping the U.S. combat global warming that might have consequences centuries from now.

As to the cost-effectiveness of solutions to worldwide problems, the 2008 convening of leading economists at the Copenhagen Consensus ranked global warming research ( emphasis supplied) as only 14th on the list of 30 cost-effective solutions to world problems. The actual mitigation of global warming ranked last in the list of problems to potentially solve. With world economies struggling, trying to solve global warming does prevent us from solving other more pressing problems.

The analogy to buying fire insurance doesn’t work. In fire insurance you pay a little now to avoid the possibility of a sudden disastrous high-cost outcome. In the alarmist argument, we spend huge amounts now to prevent a possible outcome that might take place hundreds of years from now and would be gradual.

Waiting could well be the most appropriate way to deal with this problem. We really don’t know if the climate models have been validated. Why would we want massive government controls and taxes to prevent a dubious solution? It’s not such a stretch to believe that the U.N. and its supporters have some semblance of big government and world government growth as part of their agenda.