FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 22, 2015
EPA Report: For the US, Global Action Now Saves Lives and Avoids Significant Climate Change Damages
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today released one of the most comprehensive analyses to date on the economic, health and environmental benefits to the United States of global climate action. The peer-reviewed report, “Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action,” examines how future impacts and damages of climate change across a number of sectors in the United States can be avoided or reduced with global action. The report compares two future scenarios: a future with significant global action on climate change, where global warming has been limited to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and a future with no action on climate change (where global temperatures rise 9 degrees Fahrenheit). The report then quantifies the differences in health, infrastructure and ecosystem impacts under the two scenarios, producing estimates of the costs of inaction and the benefits of reducing global GHG emissions.
“Will the United States benefit from climate action? Absolutely. This report shows us how costly inaction will be to Americans’ health, our environment and our society. But more importantly, it helps us understand the magnitude of benefits to a number of sectors in the U.S. with global climate action,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “We can save tens of thousands of American lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars, annually in the United States by the end of this century, but the sooner we act, the better off America and future generations of Americans will be.”
The report examines how the impacts and damages of climate change across a number of sectors in the United States can be avoided with global action. The findings include:
• Global action on climate change reduces the frequency of extreme weather events and associated impacts. For example, by 2100 global action on climate change is projected to avoid an estimated 12,000 deaths annually associated with extreme temperatures in 49 U.S. cities, compared to a future with no reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This is more than a 90 percent reduction from what we would expect with no action.
• Global action now leads to greater benefits over time. The decisions we make today will have long-term effects, and future generations will either benefit from, or be burdened by, our current actions. Compared to a future with unchecked climate change, climate action is projected to avoid approximately 13,000 deaths in 2050 and 57,000 deaths in 2100 from poor air quality. Delaying action on emissions reductions will likely reduce these and other benefits.
• Global action on climate change avoids costly damages in the United States. For nearly all of the 20 sectors studied, global action on climate change significantly reduces the economic damages of climate change. For example, without climate action, we estimated up to $10 billion in increased road maintenance costs each year by the end of the century. With action, we can avoid up to $7 billion of these damages.
• Climate change impacts are not equally distributed. Some regions of the United States are more vulnerable than others and will bear greater impacts. For example, without action on climate change, California is projected to face increasing risk of drought, the Rocky Mountain region will see significant increases in wildfires, and the mid-Atlantic and Southeast are projected to experience infrastructure damage from extreme temperatures, heavy rainfall, sea level rise, and storm surge.
• Adaptation can reduce damages and costs. For some sectors, adaptation can substantially reduce the impacts of climate change. For example, in a future without greenhouse gas reductions, estimated damages from sea-level rise and storm surge to coastal property in the lower 48 states are $5.0 trillion dollars through 2100. With adaptation along the coast, the estimated damages and adaptation costs are reduced to $810 billion.
The report is a product of the Climate Change Impacts and Risks Analysis (CIRA) project, led by EPA in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Pacific Northwest National Lab, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and other partners. The CIRA project is one of the first efforts to quantify the benefits of global action on climate change across a large number of U.S. sectors using a common analytic framework and consistent underlying data inputs. The project spans 20 U.S. sectors related to health, infrastructure, electricity, water resources, agriculture and forestry, and ecosystems.
Explore the report: http://www2.epa.gov/cira
See a short video: https://youtu.be/_Iz0NKA1yuo
Register for a public webinar on report scope and findings:
June 22, 2015 at 3 p.m. EST:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/9004763104216727810
June 23, 2015 at 3:30 p.m. EST:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8878335759696914946
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Estimate a problem, estimate a solution. Viola`!
Was that orchestra haiku?
What is this “global action?” Last I looked, the only thing we Ugly Americans can “do” about AGW was to buy those little squiggly light bulbs that cost 8x what the old ones do. Well, done, 5 years ago. Or are we all supposed to write checks to Al Gore?
Not to mention that when those little Squiggly lights rupture the ambient levels of mercury in the room jump to toxic levels of over 40000 to 70000 ppm
Climate Action Now. It’s repeated so often in the release, so why don’t they just capitalize the letters and trademark it as the advocacy group it is?
So would the technical group supporting information on the Climate Action Now be “CAN-IT” ?
Pull a Jeffrey Sachs out of the hat. They are fresh out of Grubers.
“They are fresh out of Grubers.”
——–
A Schikckl-gruber is prez.
Crystal ball gazing agian, I see. These are guvment departments producing guvment estimates. In all my 57 years existance I have yet to see one guvment estimate of costs for anything match reality, it’s always cost one hell of a lot more by the time whatever it is sees the light of day!!!!
= more benefit, because we know the more government spends the bigger the economy and thus the better off we are! Another brilliant benefit that is often touted is that making the same amount (or less) of electricity using green methods ‘creates more jobs’. Like, lowering productivity is a really great thing. One day, when we are all spending all day collecting firewood, we will be in a green nirvana of jobs jobs jobs. Just like in Africa.
Are they just trying to wear us all down with their stupidity?
The same old, the same old … I’m baffled how a government agency can publish up such a report.
Pushing the Agenda forward is exactly their job. Sad but true.
Ben Palmer says:
I’m baffled how a government agency can publish up such a report.
Just ask yourself the 2,000 year old question: Cui bono?
They say:
…the sooner we act, the better off
America and future generations of Americansgovernment bureaucrats will be.”^Fixed it^ for ’em.
Then they ask a question, and helpfully answer it — just in case you weren’t sure:
“Will the United States benefit from climate action? Absolutely.”
If by ‘the United States’ they mean the government and its pet scientists, why, yes, they will benefit. A lot! But notice they didn’t say “the Planet” will benefit.
The planet won’t notice. Passing a ‘carbon’ tax (which is what this is all about) won’t change the global temperature by 0.000001ºC. The only thing it will change are bank accounts: the government’s will grow, and the taxpayers’ will shrink. A lot. In both cases. ☹
In communication theory, as well as cognitive psych and perception, there’s a well known notion that if you repeat things enough people will quit paying attention. It’s kind of like kids, when you had your first-born every little sniffle garnered your attention. By the time your 3rd kid is 6 years old there can be full scale armageddon taking place in an upstairs bedroom, and you are fully able to tune it out. I believe the warmists are now six years old, waging war on their perceived enemy, while most of the adults in the area are blissfully ignoring the next outbreak of nonsense.
Hey, even my brother, who lives in Ann Arbor, that haven of traditional western conservative thought, has started to believe that it all doesn’t add up.
Unfortunately so much nonsense.
First, replacing coal fired power boilers with natural gas will reduce particulate emission, heavy metals and some nitrogen and sulfur oxides, yielding the bulk of the claimed benefits. Note that these really dont have much to do with CO2 reductions which is really incidental.
Other carbon emission reductions will actually have negative effects on environment, public health and mortality. Making energy expensive will impact economic development of impoverished communities. The leftist politicians will want more targeted subsidies to these parts of the country using inefficient ‘big government’ programs.
I dont know if the accounting takes the negative effects of energy shortages, higher expense and unreliability, as well as the rerouting of society and the economy’s production away from discovering new cures, building better transportation systems such as airplanes and automobiles (better in the sense of more safe, time and cost efficient, not in spurious carbon emission efficiency).
The tallying of avoided something is always bureaucratic and political, with many costs and alternatives either hidden or misallocated.
Hold on, this has to be wrong.
page 4 of this CDC study (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf) says we lost 10k people to hot and cold in 2006-2010 (a 4 yr span). Global Warming is so catastrophic that our mitigations to it will save 12,000 people per year? This is a 90% reduction? We cannot POSSIBLY be predicting 120,000 heat and cold related deaths a year, when we now experience approximately 2.5k per year. That’s a 50x increase. What am I misreading?
Report on local news this evening here in Ireland, gave a figure of 150,000 deaths each year as a direct or indirect result of climate change. That’s it, just a figure thrown out there to cause a scare.Nothing substantiated.
Actually, there’s quite a few funny moments in the two minute sound bite.
http://www.rte.ie/player/ie/show/10434495/ Go to 31.30 to 33.45
Eamon.
Oh, come on.
Let’s not act all that surprised, shall we? Its juvenile and facetious.
The EPA is the Environmental PROTECTION Agency. You think they’re going to gin up a statement that says, “Go ahead! We’ve determined that acid rain isn’t bad for forests, that tailpipe emissions are good for raising corn and that coal fly-ash is a great construction material! Dig, pump and burn!”
Nope. Their mandate is to PROTECT the environment, ostensibly (which is highly contestable as to whether they actually do!) So, their blitherings have to be along the lines of, “See … we, as highest environmental authority, HAVE a plan that will mitigate the almost inevitable future-of-projected-higher-temperatures, thus we are very happily doing our jobs, and filling our mandate. Please fund us more, in the future. We’ll in turn do more to create a stream of helpful blitherings, which y’all can read and feel comfort that your tax dollars are going toward something useful. Amen.”
Right?
Just saying.
GoatGuy
Environmental Protection Racket
You’ve missed the SARC tag.
and
Sadly, links don’t work …
w.
Fixed. Sadly, EPA couldn’t format their own press release correctly…
Unfortunately, they have forgotten to build in the costs of enforcing the global climate action. It requires enforcing your will over the whole world.
And after WW3 is over…
global climate action
================
The US will benefit from global action. This seems obvious. If the rest of the world will do what the US wants, the US will benefit.
The bigger question is, why will if rest of the world do what the US wants, and what is the US going to do if the rest of the world doesn’t co-operate?
To the rest of the world, the US looks like a reformed, holier than thou, 10 pack a day cigarette addict. Now that they have cut down to 8 packs a day, the US expects everyone else to cut back by 2 packs a day as well, or else.
Fred Berple:
The scientific basis for your claim that “The US will benefit from global action” is zilch.
“I love the smell of desperation in the morning….. it reminds me of victory….”
According to empirical evidence and physics, doubling CO2 will likely only cause about 0.5 C of global warming by 2100, plus or MINUS whatever the sun and other natarual variables decide to do over the next 85 years….
It’s even possible global temps could be cooler than now by 2100 should a Grand Solar Minimum occur starting from the 2022 solar cycle #25..
Even IPCC’s 2013 AR5 report admits no statistically significant increasing global trends over the past 50~100 years of frequency or serenity of: hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, tornadoes, drought, flooding, thunderstorms, tropical storms, sub-tropical storms and hail…
These pal-reviewed climatology papers are becoming even more embarrassing…
For the first time, in the 2+ decades that I have been following this subject, I actually laughed hard out loud and uncontrollably when viewing something related:
http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/cira-framework-temp-fig-1-download.png
+9 F degrees if we don’t do anything, +2.5 F degrees with mitigation.
With this projection of the temperature rising by more than 9 degrees F being so delusional with no scientific basis, I’m going to be using their own graph of this from now on as evidence to show that the intent is purely political agenda, intentionally using blatantly exaggerated propaganda to scare people in order to influence opinion and policy.
Same EPA:
http://junkscience.com/2012/03/04/epa-science-advisors-not-so-independent/
Right on! The basis for the 9 degree F claim is not falsifiable thus being unscientific.
Looking at the EPA’s graph, they are showing 1 F from 2000 to 2015 alone!
“Looking at the EPA’s graph, they are showing 1 F from 2000 to 2015 alone!”
Yes, and it’s been 0 from 2000 to 2015.
They’ve got a lot of catching up to do!
We still have the rest of 2015 to go. /sarc
That graph looks remarkably like the “Models v. Observations” graph.
!!!
Without more funding to correct our models; they will continue to go up uncontrollably. Send more money to study this problem!
I love those little squiggles in the temperature projections, they add a nice touch of authenticity.
Do you think the logarithmic effect of CO2 on temperature has been taken into account?
You can see where this is all headed. Eventually the pause will be too long to be dismissed as insignificant. (Or flat out denied). When that happens, the narrative will change to “disaster averted” thanks to carbon taxes…
The popular interpretation of correlation or weak evidence has become a de facto amendment to the scientific method.
To quite an extent they already have switched. I know in my conversations with people, when I mention that there hasn’t been any warming, they almost always bring up disasters. When I inform them that those also have no trend, they think I am crazy.
Let the Global Gruber Games begin
Show me one scientific study that proves manmamde CO2 is causing global warming. Show me one computer climate model that has accurately predicted past, present or future climate. there is no proof and there is no validated accurate computer model. All 117 computer models cited in the UN IPCC reprt had different outcomes. All were not correct. Indeed, maybe none were correct.
There is never, ever a study that “proves” anything. The only thing that a study can do is to reject a null hypothesis with a confidence level dependent on the study.
CO2 levels are highly correlated with population. Much, much better than with temperature. Control CO2 and you control population.
http://faculty.washington.edu/blewis/papers/co2/co2_ins.gif
Read the title – then take your rose coloured glasses off. This is a scripted talking piece that has no basis in reality. Title: Climate Change in the United States: BENEFITS OF GLOBAL ACTION
Are India, China, Africa, Russia, the Middle East, South America, Asia and the rest of the world going to sign on to get the “BENEFITS OF GLOBAL ACTION”????
How certain is CIRA of the results? Not very. The list of assumptions is large, including the assumption that GHG’s can be controlled and that a CS of 3 C is a good choice.
From the paper.
“Future Climate Change Across Uncertainty Sources
Investigation of the relative contribution of the four sources of uncertainty described in this section reveals that temperature change is most influenced by decisions regarding whether to reduce GHG emissions and the value of climate sensitivity used (GHG emissions scenario being the dominant contributor). The contributions from different climate models and natural variability for temperature change are small in comparison. It is worth noting that the GHG emissions scenario is the only source of uncertainty that society has control over. Conversely, these same four sources of uncertainty contribute in roughly equal measure to projected changes in precipitation over the U.S., with large spatial differences.43” (yeah – like Texas versus California right now – but this has been going on for hundreds of years already. We have no idea of the peak rains or droughts as we haven’t been keeping records for very long – in geological terms.)
Who was this written for? Why?
Tonight’s reading assignment. They did a lot of work but a lot is a rehash of old material.
It will be interesting to see other comments as I may have a biased view.
Wayne Delbeke,
We have zero data from modern instrumentation of what things are like with CO2 > 800 ppmv:
http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/cira-framework-fig-1-download.png
I’m of the mind that caution in the face of uncertainty is generally the most prudent course of action.
Exactly. The prudent thing to do, in light of little to no evidence that our CO2 is doing anything, let alone anything remotely dangerous is nothing.
Bruce Cobb,
It’s even less prudent to pretend ample empirical evidence of CO2’s radiative effects, backed by well-established theory, does not exist.
A doubling of the CO2 concentration causes ~1C increase ceteris paribus; the IPCC projections assume strong positive feedbacks, which would be a factor in any and every warming cycle whatever the cause, for which there is absolutely no evidence historically nor in present conditions.
I’m of the mind that caution in the face of uncertainty is generally the most prudent course of action.
Best if you don’t get out of bed then. Turn your electricity off and avoid heating your house or find a cave which isn’t likely to flood to be safe. It’s a dangerous and uncertain world out there, let caution be your watchword.
Are you blind on purpose, Mr. Gates? Look at how the CO2 has risen and what are the extremely marginal effects you can point to? You are either a blithering idiot or a paid shill. Which is it?
If doctor’s worked by your ideas, they would’ve long ago tossed the ‘primum non nocere’ doctrine. Your idiot doctors would feel a fever and want to cut off a limb or two. Everyone would be terrified of falling into the control of a doctor.
You must be a blithering idiot. Anyone with a lick of sense wouldn’t even be a paid shill for the game you are quoting the stupid lines for.
Straw men notwithstanding, Brandon, you are the one here who pretends. And your Belief in faux science and in the “consensus” is based on nothing but ignorance and idiocy.
Being an Ausie, I really hope Australia sends someone to Paris who has no expertise in climate “science”.
That person would then not be lonely.
For any newcomers to the blog, I’ll repost this poem
Coming out on climate
Authority figures, foretelling
Hot doom (and our “myths” dispelling),
Cast great dispersions
On skeptical versions
(Which keep carbon credits from selling)!
Now, shriller and louder they’re yelling,
To drown out the doubters’ rebelling!
New taxes are “just”
When you’ve gained public trust,
So “the questioners” (quickly) they’re quelling.
I’ve arrived at this realization;
Our industrial civilization
Can only be “sin”
If the green parties win-
On their platform of demonization!
Why not compare a +2 degree future to and Earth that explodes?
I looked at the sources of information, datasets and charts, on climate matters on your reference pages and concentrated on the Sea Ice page and the global temperature page .
What I realised was that the bulk of the information , and presumably the cost of acquiring it, comes from US sources , with some contribution from Denmark ,Canada, UK , Norway . Who, I wondered, for example, paid the bulk of the cost of the 3886 ARGO floats, which are presumably not knocked up in some sweatshop in China from metal scrap and recycled mobile phones? And the satellite systems that are so essential?
Furthermore all this information , and even details of the internal debates about how to analyse it , are made freely available to the whole world.
I do not see any info from China. Russia or India , despite these nations having their own space programmes and astronauts , whilst their scientists, mathematicians and programmers are legendary in their abilities.
I presume that this enormous cost falls on the shoulders of the US taxpayers. The same taxpayers who will be expected to hand over the majority of 100billion USD every year , in addition to maintaining the monitoring equipment , to the same countries that are the principal polluters.
The forbearance of the taxpayers of the US , and to a smaller extent of those of the UK, Canada and Europe is amazing.
How about a future with no action on climate change (where global temperatures continue, despite CO2 increases, to remain the same – just as they have for almost 20 years).
Yeah, lets make up some crazy scenarios, run some models and claim our demise. Then we’ll take action to mitigate things that have always occurred…ie flood, drought etc…and claim that we’re doing something in the name of global warming and that we are worthy and shall pat ourselves on the back, all the while spending billions of other peoples dollars and pocketing a healthy sum of their own. Dang these liars are good.