Environment Forum

Do green jobs cannibalize other jobs?

President Obama has promised to help create millions of new green jobs, saying that doing so will spur the U.S. economy toward recovery — and has held out Spain as having “surged ahead” of the rest of the world by investing in renewable energy.

But a new study of Spain’s renewable energy initiatives has found that creating green jobs actually destroys jobs in other sectors — and  most of the time doesn’t lead to permanent employment.

The study, which was directed by an economics professor at Juan Carlos University of Madrid, found that every green job created by the Spanish government destroyed an average of 2.2 other jobs, and that only 1 in 10 were permanent.

“Spain’s experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created,”  the professor, Gabriel Calzada, wrote in an introduction to the study.

“The study’s results demonstrate how such ‘green jobs’ policy clearly hinders Spain’s way out of the current economic crisis, even while U.S. politicians insist that rushing into such a scheme will ease their own emergence from the turmoil,” Calzada wrote.

Conservative bloggers have seized on the study to show that Obama’s green energy push will cost the U.S. some 6 million jobs — although others have injected a note of skepticism.

Wall Street Journal of Atmospheric Sciences: Reply to Jenkins

Stuart Gaffin is a climate researcher at Columbia University and a regular contributor with his blog “Exhausted Earth”; this is a reply to a blog by Holman Jenkins, a Wall Street Journal columnist and member of the WSJ editorial board. Thomson Reuters is not responsible for the content – the views are the author’s alone.

Mr. Jenkins replies that the clarification of his perplexing column is reiteration of his original sentence “…We don’t really have the slightest idea how an increase in the atmosphere’s component of CO2 is impacting our climate, though the most plausible indication is that the impact is too small to untangle from natural variability…”

He still doesn’t say where his ‘most plausible indication’ comes from except for his reference to some unnamed : “ … many scientists who have pursued empirical results [that] show the human contribution [has] been …maddeningly elusive or indeterminate.”

By contrast, I have no hesitation to say I was referring to IPCC when quoting the 90% confidence attribution of warming to human activities.

With regard to the first part of his dismissal of the present impact of CO2 on our climate, this has been the focus of core IPCC studies for many years and is called the ‘radiative forcing’ of the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial times (e.g. 1750). This is the energy imbalance created in the atmosphere by a factor such as greenhouse gases, aerosols, solar energy, clouds, land use. The resulting bar chart (see figure below) is famous. CO2 dominates the chart and is estimated in 2005 to be contributing a +1.66 Watts/square meter positive imbalance, greater than any other forcing, including solar by five times.

WSJ columnist rejects climate criticism

The following guest blog is by Holman Jenkins, a Wall Street Journal columnist and member of the WSJ editorial board, in response to a blog (here) by Stuart Gaffin, a climate researcher at Columbia University who is a regular contributor to these pages. Thomson Reuters is not responsible for the content — the views are the author’s alone.

By Holman Jenkins

Several of my emailers in response to my WSJ column were also perplexed what I meant when I wrote that climate science has managed to yield on the most important issue -– namely mankind’s actual impact on the climate — only a “negative finding.” In fact, clarification appears in the next sentence: Science hasn’t been able to how “an increase in the atmosphere’s component of CO2 is impacting our climate, though the most plausible indication is that the impact is too small to untangle from natural variability.”

I use “science” here to mean what most people mean by science: systematic study of the world in hopes of drawing reliable conclusions. I use “climate” the way everyone uses “climate.” Mr. Gaffin seems to read “climate” as “atmosphere” and my statement as suggesting we know nothing of any kind about how the atmosphere might behave in response to rising CO2 levels. But that’s not what I said. I’m talking about what everyone actually cares about, whether the net result is a warming climate that will continue to warm in detriment to the presumed interests of humanity.

I don’t need to rehearse how much of current claims about a human contribution to warming are based on climate models. Many scientists have pursued actual empirical results (i.e. from the world, not from computer models) to show the human contribution, but results have been maddeningly elusive or indeterminate. Speaking for myself, that’s information I would very much like to have — I would not impose large, costly adjustments on society based simply on predictions of computer simulations created by scientists eager to affirm their intuitions about climate and CO2.

But there’s no satisfying people like Mr. Gaffin that skepticism is not a willful resistance to their metaphysical certainty. Here we verge on the real source of my dissatisfaction with, and even distrust of, many of the self-appointed spokesmen for climate science, who seem to be engaged in a collective exercise of begging the most important questions.

Mr. Gaffin cites some (uncited) authority that “current research [has] concluded with 90% confidence that current warming is due to human activities.” I assume he’s referring to the UN’s IPCC, but he doesn’t say. Those double “currents” are peculiar as well -– since warming is “currently” not taking place by the most relied-upon temperature records (i.e. current research). I suppose, though, he can define “current” however he wants.

Hot Air From Weathermen

Stuart Gaffin is a climate researcher at Columbia University and a regular contributor with his blog “Exhausted Earth”. ThomsonReuters is not responsible for the content – the views are the author’s alone.

Often when seeing anti-environmental commentary about global warming in the media, I feel like the first question I would like to ask these commentators is: “Why do you deny that carbon dioxide (CO2), which is increasing in an unprecedented way in the atmosphere, is a greenhouse gas?”

If they were to start their answer: “I don’t deny it …” I would think “Good, we’ve made some progress.” However, as I think would often be the case, if they start their answer: “Because …” we should be ready to pounce on the ensuing nonsense.

Here’s a key example of such nonsense from a former weatherman:

“Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here’s the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don’t have any other issue. Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.

Here is the deal about CO2, carbon dioxide. I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000, only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand. That makes it a trace component. Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth? It can’t. That’s all there is to it; it can’t”.

This might be funny if it weren’t for the fact that editorial pages like the Wall Street Journal and conservative news sources such as Fox News treat such individuals as scientific authorities on climate change.