Guest essay by David M Hoffer [Doug L. Hoffman]
It is remarkable what gems of wisdom one can find simply by sitting down and reading the IPCC AR reports and seeing what they actually say. Having spent more time than I would like to admit on WGI (the science) over the years, I decided to spend some time on WGII (the impacts). How bad is it going to be according to the collective wisdom of 97% of the world’s climate science brain trust?
Now it is a long report, it would take weeks to work through all the chapters, the tortured language, and dig into the references, many of which would be pay walled. So I went straight for sections on the economy. Now I’m not an economist, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that anything bad that happens on a global basis will have a negative impact on our global economy. I wanted to know, if the 97% of scientists are right, how bad is it going to be? The answer blew me away. I won’t keep you in suspense, I’ll go straight to the money quote (bold theirs):
For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers (medium evidence, high agreement). Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change. {10.10}
That’s the opening statement in the Executive Summary of IPCC AR5 WGII Chapter 10 (Key Economic Sectors and Services).
As [poll after poll] shows, the public rates climate change at the very bottom of their list of concerns. The United Nations IPCC AR5 brain trust is stating, point blank, that not only will changes in population, age, income, technology, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other things have a bigger impact on our socioeconomic wellbeing, they will be much bigger. Read it for yourself here:
Click to access WGIIAR5-Chap10_FINAL.pdf
In fact, Chapter 10 goes into considerable detail showing us how little climate change is going to affect us. Based on a two degree rise in temperature over the next 50 to 100 years, they break it down sector by sector:
Table 10-10 | Summary of findings.
| Sector | Climate change drivers | Sensitivity to climate change | Sign | Other drivers | Relative impact of climate change to other drivers |
| Winter tourism | • Temperature
• Snow |
 |
Negative | • Population
• Lifestyle • Income • Aging |
Much less |
| Summer tourism | • Temperature
• Rainfall • Cloudiness |
 |
Negative for suppliers in low altitudes and latitudes Positive for suppliers in high altitudes and latitudes Neutral for tourists | • Population
• Income • Lifestyle • Aging |
Much less |
| Cooling demand | • Temperature
• Humidity • Hot spells |
 |
Positive for suppliers Negative for consumers | • Population
• Income • Energy prices • Technology change |
Less |
| Heating demand | • Temperature
• Humidity • Cold spells |
 |
Negative for suppliers Positive for consumers | • Population
• Income • Energy prices • Technology change |
Less |
| Health services | • Temperature
• Precipitation |
 |
Positive for suppliers Negative for consumers | • Aging
• Income • Diet/lifestyle |
Less |
| Water infrastructure and services | • Temperature
• Precipitation • Storm Intensity • Seasonal Variability |
 |
Negative for water users Positive for suppliers Spatially heterogeneous | • Population
• Income • Urbanization • Regulation |
Less in developing countries Equal in developed countries |
| Transportation | • Temperature
• Precipitation • Storm intensity • Seasonal variability • Freeze/thaw cycles |
 |
Negative for all users
Positive for transport construction industry |
• Population
• Income • Urbanization • Regulation • Mode shifting • Consumer and commuter behavior |
Much less in developing countries
Less in developed countries |
| Insurance | • Temperature
• Precipitation • Storm intensity • Seasonal variability • Freeze/thaw cycles |
 |
Negative for consumers Neutral for suppliers | • Population
• Income • Regulation • Product innovation |
Less or equal in developing countries
Equal or more in developed countries |
The tourism industry (both winter and summer) will be much less affected by climate change than by population, lifestyle, income and aging. You’d think cooling and heating demand would change dramatically with climate change, but no, climate change gets trumped by population, income, energy prices and technology. Health services? With all the disasters to befall us, you’d think there would be major stress on our healthcare services. Turns out that even diet trumps climate change as a driver of impacts to our wellbeing (Curiously, technology did not make the list of drivers for health services!) . For transportation climate change gets trumped by no less than a list that includes population, income, urbanization, regulation, mode shifting (if someone knows what mode shifting is, by all means post in comments) consumer and commuter behaviour. The insurance industry is apparently the only sector where climate change rivals other drivers, and then only in developed countries.
So where’s the alarm? The message to governments is pretty clear. On a global basis, there is a lot more to worry about while planning your country’s economy than climate change. Chapter 10 makes a valiant attempt to keep on message:
Losses accelerate with greater warming (limited evidence, high agreement), but few quantitative estimates have been completed for additional warming around 3°C or above.
So…. In trying to keep the fear and uncertainty at a fever pitch (losses accelerate with warming), the IPCC tacitly admits that they don’t actually know. They have, in their own words, limited evidence to draw this conclusion. Nonetheless, they forge on, insisting that they have high agreement (in the absence of evidence they nonetheless appear to have faith!). What evidence do they have? Here is the money chart from the same Chapter 10:
As can be seen from this chart, almost as many studies have been done at 3 degrees as have been done at 2.5 degrees, and they come up with almost the same result. In fact, their claim of a “few” studies at greater than 3 degrees is only two studies. One is a study done a 5.5 degrees. Given the constraints on sensitivity in the current literature, that large a temperature change could only be driven by natural variability. A single study done at 3.25 degrees which projects a negative impact of more than 12% appears to be the straw the IPCC is grasping at to keep the potential for the disaster meme alive. It is an obvious outlier from the rest of the literature, which the report tries to gloss over.
Now let’s ponder for a moment just how small these negative impacts actually are. The IPCC charts rating changes compared to other economic drivers as “less” or “much less” don’t paint the picture very well. Keeping in mind that 2% at two degrees (and that is the upper range in the estimate) is spread over the timeframe that it takes to reach that temperature. Since the target date in the Paris fear festival was 2100, let’s round it off to 100 years for easy figuring.
That’s 0.02% per year. Forecasted economic growth for most countries in the world ranges from -5% to +5% per year. In other words, the IPCC is telling us that the socioeconomic impacts of climate change are less than a rounding error. I’ll end this article by quoting the initial statement from the IPCC again. The public and government alike have a lot more to worry about than climate change:
For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers
So sayeth the United Nations
IPCC AR5 WGII Chapter 10
I accept them at their word.
One of my main concerns with this so called ‘science’ is a failure to properly and realistically measure and ascertain uncertainties/errors, and then to present the uncertainties/error bonds with the data, whenever the data is presented. .
The above is a classic case. If there is limited data, or if the data that exists is of poor quality, how can one have certainty or agreement on anything. Limited data produces only speculation.
I do not see how, if people are being objective, there can be high agreement on a statement (in this case the assertion that losses accelerate with greater warming) when there is limited evidence on that very issue.
Perhaps they mean they have high agreement that there is limited evidence. At least, this is what they could claim when the trials begin.
I thought the biggest problem for un, ipccc, is how to organize cop and mop without any fossil fuel. They are so dependent on fossil fuel that i thought they will be giving gratitude to fossil fuel and technologies using lots of fossil fuel at the closing of cop21 rather than condemning it.
Congratulations to David M Hoffer for having the persistence and fortitude to wade through all that opaque IPCC AR5 Report to draw out for us these gems of political dynamite. The conclusions drawn out of the report to fuel the Gab Fest at COP21 are far, far away from the substance of the science. The political circus has gone way out on a limb on this one and it is time to saw it off from the trunk.
and oxidize it in my wood stove
Thank you, David M Hoffer
My searches in a couple of hours have been superficial, but this promises interesting leads at least from good governance principles perspective:
The IPCC website states: The 31st panel session members adopted the 5th IPCC report in Bali (26-29 October 2009). https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/
Having looked at the final meeting report of the 31st panel session at https://ipcc.ch/meetings/session31/final_report_31.pdf, the adoption of the summary for policy makers isn’t that explicit IMO. The closest is perhaps the item 3.6 AR5 Synthesis Report: The Panel agreed on the outlines of the three Working Group contributions to the AR5 as decided by the respective Sessions of the Working Groups and decided on a revised timetable for the AR5 as follows: . . .
Fortunately the participants of the 31st panel are listed with their names in the annex VI of the final meeting report. They have now a chance to either
-deny their acceptance, as still stated at the IPCC website, and blame the IPCC secretariat or
-confirm their acceptance of the embarrassingly fundamental inconsistency, as outlined in David M Hoffer’s excellent post.
Either way, we’ll find out those responsible/accountable. If the participants opt the first option, it will be interesting to see what the UN audits have reported on the issue. Perhaps Planet GIGO news take more than 6 years to reach Ban Ki-moon.
Jaakkokateenkorva – you must be a lawyer. You are absolutely right – but where will you find a court with enforceable jurisdiction (see my reply to a similar entry from you above).
Thanks AndyE. If someone can detect 0.001 °C environmental cooling upwind, it’s a seasoned politician. Politicians’ mandate is fixed term and the ballot box is their employer.
One can argue the ‘ClimateGate e-mails’ and ‘delinquent teenager mistaken as climate expert’ were insufficient to compromise the IPCC mandated reports due to the institutional safeguards. But in this case the institutional safeguards themselves have failed. And that’s something the politicians cannot ignore.
SPM does not = Summary for Policy Makers
SPM does = Spin for Policy Makers (by UN Socialists, in our best interests, of course)
sorry –
ourreplace with theirhuge amounts of money wasted on the least of the world’s alarmists, imagined problems.
It’s shameful. For example Canada pledged $2.5 billion to the UN for this scam.
That money could have been used for AIDS or influenza virus research, or to buy 100 million Malaria mosquito nets, or to search for extinction sized asteroids maybe.
But no. Instead it will be given to unelected UN bureaucrats, so they can continue to earn six figure salaries, drive around in limos and eat caviar. Canadians should be ashamed of themselves.
Hey I didnt vote for the selfie prince. The voters were well aware of what they were voting for. I still cant believe it. A 1 percenter who has never had to work to pay bills is in charge of making these kinds of decisions with taxpayers money. Anyone but Harper crowd should be ashamed of themselves, but they aren’t. The media hasnt put the 2.5 billion number out there. Its the first time that I have heard that.
Yes, but before it gets thoroughly wasted, it feeds (literally – T&E accounts) a lot of political & climate bureaucrats and gives them control over millions of people’s lives…before the next slug on (tax) money comes rolling in.
So it’s really not worse than we thought.
I wonder how Sou from Budgerigar will spin this one?
Yet, politicians think they can control the global economy (including population growth) by controlling the burning of fossil fuels.
No surprise. However, keep in mind that environmentalists and climate alarmists seldom if ever consider economic consequences of their advocacy.
well, one very strong impact is the fact that sulfur is going to be much greater and maybe we should read up on PEM in ruminants. Remember those 200,000 llamas or guanacos that died?
And I wonder just how much impact it had on those antelope up on the Tibetan plateau.
I recommend reading P Ward’s Under a Green Sky again.
Thanks a lot for putting this together. I’ve also been astonished by the contrast between what the actual papers/reports say and what the media/politicians/activists portray. It happens in sea level rise, in carbon budgets, in climate-induced ‘disasters’ and more.
Something very noticeable in the chart you posted is that very few studies have looked at effects of warming below 2.5ºC. In fact it seems they only considered four of these studies, and it’s not even clear from them if the effects will be good or bad.
Just a bit of nitpicking though: when they talk about a temperature increase, they don’t mean from today but from a ‘preindustrial’ baseline, which is usually taken to mean 1870. Since we are currently at 1ºC of warming compared to pre-industrial levels, or 0.85ºC if we remove the current El Niño, it seems total warming over the next 100 years could exceed 2ºC (just an additional 0.12ºC/decade would put us over that mark, even if only barely).
But, I don’t have any idea how this is supposed to affect the ‘division’ of damage by years (i.e. a lot of the damage has supposedly happened already). And in any case it’s hard to fault you when the IPCC itself isn’t very clear on what baseline it’s using.
John Broome is one of the authors of the AR5 Summary for Policy Makers. Here he describes the process:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/05/08/john-broome/at-the-ipcc/
A few choice extracts:
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognises that climate change is a moral problem or, to use its cautious language, it ‘raises ethical issues’. The authors of the IPCC’s recent Fifth Assessment Report therefore included two moral philosophers. I am one of them. I have been a member of the IPCC’s Working Group 3 since 2011.”
“The outcome is a 2000-page report, which has already been published on the internet. Because no one will read a report of that size, our efforts in the last few months have gone into writing two summaries. A subgroup of authors from Working Group 3 hammered them out over the last eight months. The fuller and more reliable one is the Technical Summary. The name puts people off reading it, but actually it is not particularly technical. It is simply a summary of the main report. The shorter, 30-page précis known as the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) attracts more attention but is subject to political influence.”
“Every single sentence of the SPM has to be either approved or rejected by delegates from governments. At the Plenary meeting, the draft is projected on a screen sentence by sentence. As each sentence comes up, the chairman asks delegates for comments on it and proposed amendments. Delegates propose amendments and the authors then consider whether they can be supported by the main report. A sentence is approved only if it is supported by the main report, and only if there is a consensus on approving it among the delegates.”
“In effect, the text is edited by several hundred people sitting together in a big room. One hundred and seven countries sent delegations of varying sizes. The delegates arrive with political interests. Many oppose each other. Their governments are already locked in negotiations preparing for the major climate-change meeting planned for Paris next year. The wording of the SPM matters to the delegates, since it may be quoted in the negotiations. At our IPCC meeting, they treated the SPM as though it were a legal document rather than a scientific report. To achieve consensus, the text of the SPM was made vaguer in many places, and its content diluted to the extent that in some places not much substance remained.”
“The section of the SPM that I was involved with came up early in the proceedings. It was quickly apparent that it could not be agreed in the Plenary Session where all the delegates sat. So the authors of that section were sent as a ‘Contact Group’ to a smaller room to negotiate the details with some tens of countries. We worked for three and a half days on one page. Meetings each day ran from 8 a.m. till midnight with hardly time to eat. The delegates made comments, we went away to rewrite the text on the basis of the comments, the delegates made further comments, we rewrote again, and so on. Several delegates in the meetings were sending their governments photos of the text on the screen as it was negotiated, and taking instructions from their governments by phone.”
“Late on Wednesday evening, during a brief break, the delegates formed a huddle in the corner, trying to agree text between themselves. We, who would be named as authors of the final product, were left as spectators.”
“The main report and the Technical Summary were not touched by the destructive process of the meeting. They make publicly available all the information that was deleted from the SPM. Because of the way it is created, the SPM has to be regarded as partly a political document. It contains nothing that has not been approved by the authors, but it was prevented from giving a complete picture as we see it. The deleted information is needed as a basis for making good climate policy.”
Needless to say, the deleted information is never seen by politicians, as in David Hoffer’s piece, which motivated me to go and look for the SPM writing team. It was led by Rajendra Pachauri and included one of the main “2 degree, leave it in the ground” protagonists, Myles Allen.
Also noteworthy are Ottmar Edenhofer, John Schellnhuber’s co-director at Potsdam and an advisor with him to the Papal Encyclical, plus Michael Oppenheimer, of Princeton, long time activist via Environmental Defense and co-founder of the Climate Action Network of NGO’s. He is also a long time promoter of the 1.5-2 degrees meme, even before 2 degrees was claimed by Schellnhuber.
[Thank you. Good find. .mod]
Wow!
another WOW!
dennisambler, thanks for reporting that.
I wonder who the other moral philosopher was.
John
I’m somewhat taken aback to learn that there are only two moral philosophers in the first place. I wonder what all the rest of the philosophers in the world think, and why anyone should trust them. 🙂
Thanks dennisambler. IPCC needed moral philosophers for break-out sessions? It must have been budgeted and approved in advance for the IPCC by the relevant governing body. Like a nanny in the kindergarten.
Break-out sessions as such are quite common even in well organized intergovernmental meetings in case of controversial topics.
“In effect, the text is edited by several
hundredpeople sitting together in a big room.”This is also done when revising and creating engineering technical documentation. The only differences are that we are actively looking for mistakes in our own writing, we work towards actually building something and know when we’re finished, the media doesn’t breathlessly report any of our work and we don’t have virtually unlimited taxpayer money to complete our tasks. Oh yeah, and we tend to get fired if we eff things up.
Great, dennisambler!
“The fuller and more reliable one is the Technical Summary. “
and
“The main report and the Technical Summary were not touched by the destructive process of the meeting. They make publicly available all the information that was deleted from the SPM.”
WR: So politicians and journalists must be advised to read the true story in the Technical Summary when they don’t want to read 2000 pages.
“Late on Wednesday evening, during a brief break, the delegates formed a huddle in the corner, trying to agree text between themselves. We, who would be named as authors of the final product, were left as spectators.”
“Because of the way it is created, the SPM has to be regarded as partly a political document. It contains nothing that has not been approved by the authors, but it was prevented from giving a complete picture as we see it.”
WR:
SPM ≠ SCIENCE ↔ SPM = GOVERNMENT
And there you have it, covers off! The scam revealed!
Posting from my IPad
Thank you for a great post. I hope everyone is encouraged to read more of the IPCC reports past and present to find more of these nuggets.
Some nuggets already known: That graphic from the AR#1 that shows the medieval warm period, The quote from the AR4 Chapter 5? That tells us that a warmer world will have moe evaporation, water vapor and precipitation and then we listen to the media drone on about drought. Chapter 10 in the AR4 has a table uh 10.21? That shows that Antarctica will contribute negatively to sea level rise through 2100. The IPCC’s charter that says to report on man-made effects of CO2. The AR5’s chapter 11 has a chart reproduced twice no less that shows how badly the models have predicted the average temperature. The opening sentence in the AR4 Chapter 5? Executive Summary that tells us ocean temperatures are up 0.01 or 0.1 degrees since 1962. Really they can measure that close? I think the AR#1 has a quote that sea level is going up at 1.7 mm per year.
That’s off the top of my head, there are most likely quite a few illustrations that show the divergence between the IPCC and media blather.
Apologies for my uncertainties above, I’m away from home and on an IPad
David M Hoffer,
Worthwhile work and very well presented.
So, I need to get an excel spreadsheet showing the all WGs results versus those in the associated chapters of the SPM. It seems it will be hard work though.
John
So government is the biggest problem not climate change considering most of the other causes mentioned are impacted by regulation and governance. Probably 97 percent.
Yes, it’s always a good idea to go to the source, even the dense, pedantic, impenetrable source.
Thanks for highlighting this. I’ll spend a lot more time with the AR5.
I don’t think that referring to the other drivers of economies as “problems” clarifies the issues. These other drivers plus changing climate have always primary influences for changing economies. People adapt to these challenges or not. Those who don’t adapt see their culture vanish. Technology has moderated the influence of climate upon cultures and economies, but the impact of climate still exists. Only the AGW crowd could believe this is all new.
The author has done a service to read through this tome. I am not at all surprised to see that the summaries reflect not the research, but preferred political conclusions. However, I am bothered that an ethicist can admit to the shennanigans, without broadcasting these to the public widely. Does he not believe in giving all parties to an arrangement symmetrical information?
I should have clarified that the ethicist I referred to is John Broome, not Mr. Hoffer.
Climate has always changed . . .naturally. There is little that humans can do about it. The last change is it stopped warming. The next change is accelerated cooling. Sustained cooling will be a problem. The expected average global temperature trend for the next couple of decades is at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
They always leave themselves with an out.
“For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers (medium evidence, high agreement).”
I could rework this to say: However for some economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be large.
From table 10.10, relative impact of climate change to other factors:
– Water infrastructure & services: Equal in developed countries.
– Insurance: Less or equal in developing countries. Equal or more in developed countries.
So there you have it – the biggest impacts will not be in those poor African countries that need our billions to mitigate climate change, but in our own countries that will run out of water presumably, and suffer from more storms.
We need that climate fund to save ourselves:-)
Consider the subsistence farmer or herder in sub-Saharan Africa, with essentially no “income”. Losing a crop or a herd would be disastrous but amount to essentially zero change on the economic balance sheet. Is this addressed here?
Hi Barry, nice to see that you’re still hanging around. Sue me if you think this a straw man but you seem to be implying that human emissions of CO2 are going to cause said farmers crop and live stock loss more than otherwise would occur. You don’t know that, nobody does, spending trillions on an unproven theory to save your hypothetical farmer isn’t sound policy.
Is this addressed here?
Sorta. If you take a look through the first chart, in some cases the rating are broken out between developed and undeveloped countries. Of course the details as to why and how the conclusions are drawn would require additional investigation.
“Barry
January 2, 2016 at 2:24 pm
Consider the subsistence farmer or herder in sub-Saharan Africa, with essentially no “income”.”
A subsistance farmer or herder HAS no income. Idiot!
Barry:
One of the many problems with strawmen comments: you define a crop/herd to have zero value. If losing a crop/herd (NOTE: lost is different than never existed; an existing crop/herd, no matter how small, has some presumed value) would have “essentially zero change on the economic balance sheet” (eg: the crop/herd had 0 value), then a successful crop/herd must also have zero impact.
That implies a crop/herd of any size still has exactly zero value (i.e.: x * 0 = 0). That’s just nuts.
Unless, of course, you argue that a lost crop/herd has no value, but a “saved” herd/crop has value. I’d bet the subsistence farmer/herder would claim his lost crop/herd had significant value.
that is a big problem – sign the petition to maintain individual property rights
BTW – you just have to place the URL in there once …
here – https://americanpolicy.wufoo.com/forms/protect-property-rights-home-rule-stop-aff/
Over one million human lives lost annually during “planning” rites in America alone.
Yeah, the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming prophecy seems low risk comparatively.
Yikes! Damned if you aren’t right. That’s what it says, all right!
It lookes as if everybody agrees that climate change has a low impact. If that’s so, why not go on heating the earth up for example 5 or 10 degrees more? I see a lot of numbers here, but less logical reasoning. One of the concerns about global heating is that a relatively equilibrated situation will be broken. For example, with heating actually dissolved carbon dioxide will be liberated and increase heating and melting of the North and the South Pole will reduce sunlight reflection and therefore increase heating. Climate change and human activity reduce biological diversity and increase unstability (remember the effects of the reduction of the bee population). If we want to avoid this to happen, we have to make sure global heating will remail limited to a level we’re certain will not create major problems (however, it seems nobody is interested in this). Avoiding it means that greenhouse gasses have to be reduced and this does have an important impact which, as it seems, the above study hasn’t taken into account, as we basically have to switch from fossil-based economy to a circular economy which implies paying for switching itself and paying for additional costs related to a sustainable circular economy. In the end, this means will have to pay for what now illegitimately is being subsidied. According to an IMF study of May 2015, Energy subsidies are projected at US$5.3 trillion in 2015, or 6.5 percent of global GDP, since energy taxes are not high enough to account for the consequences of using (mainly) fossil-based energy, such as environmental damage and climate change. Isn’t this a major impact?
BGG writes:
“It lookes as if everybody agrees that climate change has a low impact.”
That’a a meaningless sentence. It indicates fuzzy thinking. And where does nonsense like this come from:
…the consequences of using (mainly) fossil-based energy, such as environmental damage and climate change.
This is a science site, but you’re writing emotional propaganda.
The basic issue with the ‘man-made global warming’ scare is CO2. The claim was that a rise in CO2 would cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. That has been completely falsified. The substantial rise in CO2 has not caused any measurable global warming. In fact, the rise in CO2 has been highly beneficial.
There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening with ‘the climate’. We are in a century long “Goldilocks” temperature range. You cannot identify a prior century when global temperatures were as flat as they have been recently.
Global temperatures have fluctuated by only ≈0.7ºC during the past hundred and fifty years. That is as close to flat as you can find. What do you want? A century long 0.00º change?? Just prior to the current Holocene, temperatures fluctuated by TENS of degrees, within only a decade or two. That was before any industrial CO2 emissions.
Your writing indicates that you are another victim of the bogus “climate change” narrative. But if you think for yourself instead of letting the media control your thinking, you will understand the scam and why they’re doing it: carbon taxes.
BGG January 3, 2016 at 6:40 am
It lookes as if everybody agrees that climate change has a low impact. If that’s so, why not go on heating the earth up for example 5 or 10 degrees more?
No one said anything about 5 to 10 degrees. Nor is there any reason to. The science upon which we are being asked to rely is increasingly clear that sensitivity to CO2 isn’t anywhere near high enough to produce that kind of temperature change. Check the IPCC WG1 reports for yourself. Second, the preponderance of evidence in this report shows that a temperature rise of 2 to 3 degrees would have, at most an economic impact that is tiny in comparison to many other factors, at only 2% (spread out over the better part of a century). So, should we devote 6.5% of out economic our GDP to fix a 2% problem? If that sounds like a good investment to you, I have a Nigerian oil prince who would like to meet you. The point of the article is that a whole array of factors are going to have major impacts on our socioeconomic well being that require a whole lot more attention than climate change is getting.