In Bjørn Lomborg’s latest oped: Global Warming’s Upside-Down Narrative Lomborg points out the following:
- The IPCC says unmitigated climate change will cost 0.2-2% GDP/year in 2070.
- The IPCC says climate policies in 2070 will cost more than 3.4% and likely much more than that.
This is why climate mitigation makes no economic sense: the cure costs more than the disease.
But, wait, “Skeptical Science” tank driver Dana Nuccitelli has an op-ed today in Guardian where he claims the IPCC uses only a select range of measures: the 0.2-2% is expressed in “annual global economic losses”, while the other is expressed “as a slightly slowed global consumption growth.”.
He only achieves that by cutting out the actual quote from IPCC report, as you can see in the screen cap helpfully provided by Lomborg in his Twitter feed that compares texts. Note the ellipsis:
Source: [ https://twitter.com/BjornLomborg/status/458628793825890305 ]
And that’s why we label the Dana Nuccitelli/John Cook “skeptical science” enterprise in our blogroll as a category all their own, “Unreliable”.
Nuccitelli eliminated the full text of that section of the third IPCC report so he could bolster his headline claim “preventing global warming is the cheap option”.
Imagine the screaming if any climate skeptic did something like that in an MSM venue.
Meanwhile Lomborg in his op-ed points out what is really worth worrying about, and it isn’t the beloved global warming “crisis” of the Skeptical Science Kids.
We live in a world where one in six deaths are caused by easily curable infectious diseases; one in eight deaths stem from air pollution, mostly from cooking indoors with dung and twigs; and billions of people live in abject poverty, with no electricity and little food. We ought never to have entertained the notion that the world’s greatest challenge could be to reduce temperature rises in our generation by a fraction of a degree.
Lomborg makes more humanistic sense than Nuccitelli, and he doesn’t have to make lies of omission to get his point across.
They estimate the uncertain cost of uncertain secondary impacts of uncertain temperature change.
Kudos to Lomborg for trying, but it’s arguing over some number which has been pulled out of an expensive hat.
It’s possible that Nuccitelli just made a slip.
Uh I don’t get what was wrong about the elimination of that sentence. The deleted percentages are the cumulative effect of an annual reduction of between .04-.14% of GNP. This is in comparison of .2-2% per year if we do nothing. It seems to me that Nuccitelli’s point is correct and the deletion of text is not misleading. What am I missing here?
Most of it was true so that makes it RIGHT. Its the percentage that counts (for them). Lie never happens because they are always RIGHT.
Last week I visited SkepticalScience out of boredom and noted the scarcity of comments to his postings. Well, like a drunk that spies an open mike on Karaoke Night I couldn’t resist. I was mildly surprised to discover my comment was moderated and deleted for claimed ad hominem attacks. My worst crime was apparently my response to some overwrought poster who had managed to use some form of the word “vicious” in three straight lines of his rant about despoilers of our Earth. I commented that while I heard the passion he had for his opinions, he should consider switching to De-Caf and buy a Thesaurus. Needless to say I’m at least slightly honored to have acquired this particular skeptic’s merit badge, the Double D or Dana Deletion.
While I’m here, I’d like to point out that the “Waking the Frog” book’s title praised above is based on an anecdote that is apparently not true. Several weirdly curious people have done the experiment recently and the frog just hops out of the pot. While I wish Mr. Rand good luck in his literary foray, I would caution him that building a book’s premise on a faulty anecdote is not the road to success, as my Sex Education book, titled “Hairy Palms,” showed,
Adaption also protects us better from current weather events etc… so some of the cost already offset and mitigation overall has greater benefit and will save lifes currently as risk from storm surges etc… its a no brainer!
Lomborg talks about the tragedy that lies behind the caricature that is Nuccitelli.
Lomborg is right. Nuccitelli is wrong.
Is this a chance to test the UK’s new replacement for the Press Complaints Commission?
@ur momisugly M Courtney
Maybe somebody in the UK will take up the mantle on that?
I don’t understand why the abbreviation “SS” is not used for the Skeptical Science website.
I usually defer to the adage “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” but, I have never seen a picture of Nutticelli where he is not sneering or seemingly so.
Martin A says:
April 23, 2014 at 12:42 am
Because they asked. I ignore the request because they are what they are.
Martin A says: (April 23, 12:42 am)
“I don’t understand why the abbreviation “SS” is not used for the Skeptical Science website.”
Martin, many people here, understandably, feel much the same about them. However, Our Host has (rightly, IMO) decided that recycling old WWII terminology to insult your opponents in an argument is unacceptable and does not help the discussion. Keep cool, and resist the temptation, no matter how strong: we have the facts on our side and simply don’t need to resort to tacky insults like … er, certain people I could name, but won’t in the name of good taste. 😉
Nuccitelli is the classic example of little man made big in their own minds by circumstances , but in fact remaining small. SS was set up as fanzine for ‘real climate ‘ because people really were not buying that RC , staffed by ‘the team’ , was in anyway independent or honest in its coverage.
Like the rest of the ‘team’ Cooks little gang can only function where they allowed to fully control the argument, hence the need for lying , changing others words or in this case sins of omission. That the Guardian has chosen to hand itself over to this gang is no surprise, after all it did it before with Bob ‘fast fingers ‘ Ward .
Probable the best approach is to let them circle their wagons , spend all their time patting each other on the back and claim ‘great victories’ for keep the sceptics out . While having nothing to do with them , for neutrals will rapidly get tired of the increasing levels stupid claims they spout in their reinforcing circle , as they try to out ‘hate the sceptics’ each other, and so walk away.
Henry Galt. Steve C
Fair enough, if they asked.
I had assumed that they coined the name of their website in the expectation of such an abbreviation being used. I would go with their apparently self-generated photoshop images of themselves in stormtroop uniforms.
[Before WW2, there was a British company the Swallow Sidecar company. They started building cars, using components from the Standard car company. It became known as SS Cars Ltd and their leading models were styled “SS Jaguar”. In 1945/6 production restarted with virtually the same models as in 1939, but the company changed its name to Jaguar. Understandably.]
You can’t expect people like Dana Nuccitelli tell the whole truth, they’re too busy throwing it under the bus.
I would not spend too much time on a press complaint. This is a blog hosted by The Guardian and is clearly an op-ed rather than anything to do with reporting facts.
Our only hope is that Dana is tarnishing his reputation to the extent that he will be heard and SkS and The Guardian but no respectable platform will disseminate his stuff without a thorough check on its veracity.
In the meantime his noble cause corruption should be disseminated and called out as widely as possible.
Nucitelli is a base fellow; he lyed.
I’m sorry everybody, but in this (rare) case, Dana appears to be right. The quoted text appears to be saying that the mitigation actions will reduce the projected wealth *at specific points in time* (that is, 2030, 2050, 2100) by some percentage. The loss is *NOT* per year (contrary to the second red note in the picture). So if, say, there is a projected loss of 4% in 2050, and by 2050 our wealth is expected to be 100 times that of today, the 4% figure means it will be only 96% that of today. The actual loss on a per year basis is much much smaller (something around 0.3%?).
The main issue here is with the IPCC and their inability (or unwillingness) to provide a straightforward “apples-to-apples” comparison of the relative costs and benefits of mitigation vs. adaptation.
They’ve presented adaptation costs for an increase of x degrees as an economic loss, and mitigation costs to limit the increase to x degrees as a reduction in consumption growth. To most people this might sound like the same thing, but economically speaking, this is an “apples-to-oranges” comparison (consumption is only one slice of the economic pie).
But it’s even more confusing than that because for any increase of x degrees, the two costs are additive, not an “either-or” comparison.
The one thing you can’t do with the numbers provided is to directly compare the mitigation cost to the adaptation cost for a given temperature rise (e.g. 2 degrees). What you can do is compare the combined costs of mitigation and adaptation for various future temperature rises (e.g. 2 degrees vs. 4 degrees) .
For example:
For a 2 degree increase, we should expect both low adaptation costs (since 2 degrees is mostly harmless) and high mitigation costs (to limit the temperature rise to only 2 degrees). You have to add together the small economic losses, with the very large reduction in consumption growth (while allowing for uncertainties in both).
For a 4 degree increase, we should expect significantly higher adaptation costs, but much lower mitigation costs. Add these together (allowing for uncertainties), and then compare the total against the 2 degree scenario.
(My expectation is that the uncertainties will completely swamp the calculated difference.)
“…annualized consumption growth in the baseline that is between 1.6% and 3.0% per year.”
The gross consumption growth by 2030 from 2014 would be therefore between 40.0% and 94.3% [1.29% growth for 86 years to get 300% at 2100, and 2.29% growth for 86 years to get 900% at 2100: the numbers are date-interpretable]. I think Dana is picking up the claim that the cost would be 1-4% (median 1.7%) of the 40 – 94% growth, meaning you couldn’t detect the slowdown in the economy.
That is what I think the IPCC/Dana is saying, not what Lomborg is saying, that the cost would be greater than the growth EACH YEAR.
“Unreliable”? This is sheer Mendacity!
I’m surprised that he’s still employed at Tetra Tech (if he still is). If I were one of their clients and I saw how willfully he mangled the evidence and distorted the truth, I’d have serious concerns about the truthfulness and accuracy of anything he did. (I would also think that as his employer, they might be concerned about how he might reflect on the company and how vulnerable the company might be if he were so cavalier with the facts in company reports.)
Lomborg makes the common mistake that Nuccitelli cares about people dying. Fewer people is the goal of so many environmentalist, not the problem.
This in 1996 from Ted Turner :
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
Today that total is closer to, wait for it, 97% (96.54%).
If there was ever any doubt that the misrepresentation was deliberate and intended to impoverish, or even crash, the planet’s economy, this should remove it.