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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“Peer reviewed”???
Which part, the part that estimates the possible future damage under the scenarios or the part that states that if nothing is done “global temperatures rise 9 degrees Fahrenheit”?
In the context of a federal bureaucracy what does ‘peer reviewed’ mean? Approved for publication by other federal bureaucrats?
Note the first word in “Global action now.” There won’t be global action.
And, don’t forget:
If the concept is that adding more CO2 into the atmosphere will cause the climate to change
then adding less CO2 into the atmosphere will also cause the climate to change.
Doesn’t the EPA keep up on the latest climate change news? The human race is going to be extinct in 100 years. It was in a scientific report and as we all know the science is settled.
So, were the 12000 deaths from eating sub-standard bread or did they forget to factor that in as well?
Wait a minute, is this saving a few thousand of the richest people who can afford to pay their utility bills, or the poorest parts of society who are most affected by cold weather that apparently is a fantastic thing to live with, and are most affected financially by the obsession to kill GHG emissions?
As for extreme temperatures in a selective 49 cities (i’m sure it’s all heat and not cold), easy answer to that is move your ass out of the city where UHI is a non-issue.
I wonder how many of the estimated 589,430 deaths from cancer in the USA in 2015 could be avoided if more money was spent on actual scientific research of value, than wasted on this giant boondoggle?
A list of sprinkles for the stewed horse-apples; file FIA forms [ redacted ] for prices.
King Barack the Magnificent is now fulfilling his pledge that his reign would be when the CO2 stopped rising and the oceans would start falling. Just as with the Ozone Hole, victory shall be declared, not because the sky wasn’t falling in the first place, but because the Magnificent One has propped it back up. All hail the Emperor, but no peeking at his clothes!
Peer reviewed? A bunch of scenarios? I wondered if they peer reviewed the assumptions. The use of the peer review term is not appropriate.
“The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.”– Albert Einstein
Gina McCarthy and the EPA have their own climate model, but when she is stumping for Obama’s Executive orders, or in this case for the IPCC, she certainly cannot divulge what it tells her.
The EPA’s climate mode, MAGICC (Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change) was developed by scientists at the National Center of Atmospheric Research under funding by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
According to MAGICC calculations and assuming that the temperature will increase 3 degrees C by the year 2100 if no action is taken to reduce CO2 emissions, the following savings in temperature rise will be achieved if different levels of CO2 reductions are achieved:
IF ONLY THE U.S. REDUCED CO2 EMMISSIONS:
Reduction of CO2 Emissions Temperature Rise Reduction by 2050 Temperature Rise Reduction by 2100
20% .013oC .018oC
40% .021 .044
60% .032 .076
80% .042 .106
100% .052 .137 !!!!
IF ALL INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRIES REDUCE CO2 EMISSIONS:
Reduction of CO2 Emission Temperature Rise Reduction by 2050 Temperature Rise Reduction by 2100
20% .025oC .110oC
40% .045 .149
60% .064 .192
80% .084 .235
100% .104 .278 !!!!!
According to MAGICC, if the United States eliminated all CO2 emissions today (an impossibility), the effect on Earth’s climate would be an imperceptible reduction of .137 degrees centigrade by the year 2100! If the entire industrialized world totally eliminated all CO2 emissions, it would result in a temperature decrease of about a quarter of one degree (.278 oC) by the year 2100, hardly worth destroying the world’s economy. THIS IS THE “RECOGNIZED TRUTH” THAT MS. MCCARTHY MUST HIDE when she is on the stump for Obama’s executive orders or for the IPCC.
When Gina McCarthy is on the stump for Obama’s executive orders related to climate change, she makes statements such as the following:
“It is unlikely that any specific one step is going to be seen as having a visible impact on any of those impacts.”
Ms. McCarthy certainly does not say: “The EPA climate model estimates that the benefit of shutting down substantially all of our coal-powered electrical generating plants and wrecking our economy for decades to come is the reduction of the Earth’s temperature by eighteen one-thousandths of one degree (.0018 oC) by the year 2100”. That recognized truth must not be disclosed.
REMEMBER THIS CAMPAIGN PROMISE? Then Senator Obama: “I taught constitutional law for ten years. I take the Constitution very seriously. The BIGGEST PROBLEMS that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all, and THAT’S WHAT I INTEND TO REVERSE WHEN I’M PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”
BY HER OWN ADMISSION, GINA MCCARTHY DOES NOT CARE WHAT CONGRESS WANTS: “I will tell you that I didn’t go to Washington to sit around and wait for Congressional action. Never done that before, and don’t plan to in the future.”
McCarthy thinks she knows better than Congress. Obama’s ill-conceived Executive Orders have put McCarthy into a position that allows her to do whatever (and buy whatever science) she wants.
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),…”
1. Peer reviewed a futuristic fantasy…this is science?
2. Note the sentence limits warming to…whatever – it makes no difference what temp they limit cuz they can and will move the goal posts.
3. Earthlings are going to control the climate – Science Fiction, Double Feature
What a fraud-report!
One can see that this report is again filled with exaggerations and worst case scenarios meant to make headlines and scare people Like the similar report prepared for Pentagon 10 years ago. none of the predictions came to pass and the same can be said about this one. . One can see that both NOAA and EPA have now both become global warming alarmists and political rather than neutral government agencies
Nobody can predict the future. Nobody. But the Enviro-pixie can. McCarthy seems to have been chosen because she presents a benign face to totalitarianism. That is all.
Did you ever wonder why Egypt, back in the days of the pharos, went broke? Could it be all the wasted money spend on government work programs like building pyramids.
“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.”
This doesn’t make any sense to me. How can these not offset? Does the other 3 billion go into their pocket?
Shank’s Pony is cheap
This getting so tiring and I just KNOW “climate change” will soon be blamed on the increase of depression, gun violence, failed satellite launches , job loss etc etc etc. I really drives me crazy. And BTW AW I am convinced that the hoax has so permeated the bureaucrats it is a absolute really sad joke. As others have mentioned you cannot talk at any level to these people I don’t know where you get the strength from ( Oh right I forgot the KOch Bros /sarc)
The EPA has been completely corrupted by climate extremists.
They had to investigate “the Benefits of Global Action” because unilateral US action produces no benefits — even under their most hallucinatory assumptions.
“and a future with no action on climate change (where global temperatures rise 9 degrees Fahrenheit)”
According to NOAA, Contiguous US annual temperatures rose at a rate of 0.09 F/DECADE or 0.9 degrees in 100 years , a rate that is 1/10 of what EPA is now projecting by the end of this century. This is exaggeration of the worst kind and it is coming from your federal government agency. . This is made even worse when the cooling since 2000 is- 0.27 F/decade and since 2005 at -.0.69F/decade. The credibility of this report is zero if this is the kind of exaggerations they use to scare the public.
Digging deeper into the detail sections of the above EPA report or study, they predict Temperature Change in the U.S. as follows:
“Under the Reference scenario, the largest increases in average temperature across the contiguous U.S. by 2100 are projected to occur in the Mountain West—up to a 14°F increase from present-day average temperature (Figure 2). The northern regions are also likely to see larger temperature increases than the global average (up to 12°F, compared to a global average of 9.3°F), while the Southeast is projected to experience a relatively lower level of overall warming (but comparable to the global average increase). ”
Yet NOAA’s latest CLIMATE AT A GLANCE records show this extreme warming trend to be VERY DOUBTFUL. The hiatus is still happening despite NOAA gyrations to hide it.
• There is clearly little global warming happening since 2005 when it comes to global land area.
• Global land area temperature annual anomalies during the last 10 years show a flat or negative( cooling )trend of -0.02 C / decade according to NOAA own Climate at A Glance data. UAH satellite data confirm this
• Northern Hemisphere land area 12 month temperature anomalies during the last 10 years show a flat or slightly negative or cooling trend -0.05/ C/decade respectively according to NOAA own Climate at A Glance data.
• In North America, Contiguous US annual temperature anomalies show a negative or cooling trend since 2005 at -0.69 F/decade and a cooling trend of – 0.48/decade since 1998 according to NOAA own Climate at a Glance data
• A similar pattern appears to be in Canada where 7 out of 11 climate regions show declining annual temperature departures since 1998; one is flat and 3 show warming from the. In other words 70 % of North American climate regions are not experiencing global warming but cooling.
.
I just did a quick scan of the report so I hope I’m simply missing something, but I see a lot of text and pretty pictures talking about the benefits of mitigation but I didn’t see any analysis of the cost of mitigation. Did I miss it? (I noted that the title didn’t say cost-benefit analysis it simply said benefit analysis but I hoped that was just a sloppy title— turns out it might be accurate)
That’s some IEEE stuff there. Imagine, Estimate, Exaggerate, Extrapolate.
And just in time for Paris COP-21, there will be an app for that. From the ESRI newsletter:
Enter the Climate Change and Human Health App Challenge
Understanding the geography of climate change is critical to mitigating its health impacts and creating a vibrant and sustainable future. Join us in support of the White House Climate Data Initiative as we unleash the power of GIS to protect public health.
Esri is calling on the worldwide GIS community to build map and analytical tools that help communities visualize, understand, and reduce climate change health risks. Esri’s Climate Change and Human Health App Challenge is open to everyone — developers, start-ups, governments, academics, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
http://www.esri.com/landing-pages/industries/health/climate-change-app-challenge?utm_source=esri&utm_medium=email&utm_term=108301&utm_content=footer&utm_campaign=climate_app_challenge_2015
Themes to Consider
Impacts of extreme heat and severe weather
Consequences of wildfires and floods
Effect of drought on food insecurity, malnutrition, mental stress
Increases in vector-borne or water-borne diseases
Air pollution and or pollen and respiratory disease
Assessing the risks to vulnerable populations and those with special needs
Tailoring education and/or risk communication to targeted populations
Found this today….I’ll let my wife know.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/24/3672960/climate-change-womens-rights-united-nations/