Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Dana, the wrath of Gaea will strike down Trump voters unless Republican leaders embrace a Carbon Tax.
Global warming will depress economic growth in Trump country
Dana Nuccitelli
Mon 7 May 2018 20.00 AEST
It’s global warming that will hurt the economy in red states, not a carbon tax.
A working paper recently published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond concludes that global warming could significantly slow economic growth in the US.
Specifically, rising summertime temperatures in the hottest states will curb economic growth. And the states with the hottest summertime temperatures are all located in the South: Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas, and Arizona. All of these states voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
…
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who represents Louisiana (the second-hottest state), recently introduced a new anti-carbon tax House Resolution. Scalise introduced similar Resolutions in 2013 with 155 co-sponsors (154 Republicans and 1 Democrat) and in 2015 with 82 co-sponsors (all Republicans). The latest version currently only has one co-sponsor, but more will undoubtedly sign on. All three versions of the Resolution include text claiming, “a carbon tax will lead to less economic growth.”
As the economics research shows, failing to curb global warming will certainly lead to less economic growth. Climate policies could hamper economic growth, but legislation can be crafted to address that concern.
…
In short, if Trump, Scalise, and the rest of the Republican Party want to prevent slowed economic growth in red states, they should be trying to craft an optimal carbon tax, not blindly rejecting the idea outright.
The abstract of the study;
Temperature and Growth: A Panel Analysis of the United States
Riccardo Colacito, Bridget Hoffmann, Toan Phan
We document that seasonal temperatures have significant and systematic effects on the U.S. economy, both at the aggregate level and across a wide cross-section of economic sectors. This effect is particularly strong for the summer: a 1oF increase in the average summer temperature is associated with a reduction in the annual growth rate of state-level output of 0.15 to 0.25 percentage points. We combine our estimates with projected increases in seasonal temperatures and find that rising temperatures could reduce U.S. economic growth by up to one-third over the next century.
The study seems to be attempting to infer the impact of climate shifts by studying the impact of temperature anomalies on productivity. In my opinion this is a dubious inference. People who are used to higher temperatures do not suffer the same productivity declines as people who might be less used to such temperatures when they experience abnormally warm weather. Warm states like California and Texas are not at the bottom of US productivity or income bands, which suggests other factors which contribute to the prosperity of different states may be more important than their Summer temperature.
The study authors attempt to address this issue in section 3.4 Stability of the effects through time, but admit that they cannot draw statistically reliable conclusions about people’s ability to adapt to warmer temperatures post 1990 in fall (i.e. when people are back at work).
… We re-run the regression specified in equation (4) but delay the beginning of the sample by one year at a time. We repeat this exercise until the sample starts in 1990; past this year, the sample size becomes very small, thus compromising the power of our estimation. The results, reported in figure 3 show that the summer coefficient remains negative and statistically significant at the 10% level as the sample shrinks; the point- estimate for the summer effect is −0.154 in the full sample and −0.246 in the post-1990 sample. However, the fall coefficient is no longer statistically significant in the post-1990 sample; the point-estimate for the fall effect is 0.102 in the full sample and 0.031 (and indistinguishable from zero) in the post-1990 sample. This finding is consistent with the results of our robustness checks (section 5.3): the summer effect is very robust, but the fall effect is not. …
Read more: Same link as above, page 17
The study author’s exploration of mechanisms by which the warmer temperatures have their alleged long term negative impact on productivity includes gems like the following;
… Our results are in line with other findings in the literature. For example, Cachon et al. (2012) document that heat and snow significantly affect output and productivity in automobile plants. The occurrence of six or more days with temperatures above 90 degrees Farenheit reduces the weekly production of U.S. automobile manufacturing plants by an average of 8 percent. Given that automobile manufacturing largely takes place indoors, the authors argue that this finding suggests there are limitations of air conditioning; it is possible that there are important areas in the production process, such as loading and unloading areas, that are difficult to cool or warm. Bloesch and Gourio (2015) also document that cold weather negatively affects production in various industries. We will return to this discussion in the industry analysis below. …
Read more: Same link as above, page 20
Even if we accept the premise of the study, climate science is far from certain about the extent of future warming; even the IPCC admits climate sensitivity could plausibly be as low as 1C / doubling of CO2. 1C / doubling would produce maybe half a degree of extra warming if we burned all known remaining fossil fuel reserves.
… Estimates of the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) based on multiple and partly independent lines of evidence from observed climate change indicate that there is high confidence that ECS is extremely unlikely to be less than 1°C and medium confidence that the ECS is likely to be between 1.5°C and 4.5°C and very unlikely greater than 6°C. These assessments are consistent with the overall assessment in Chapter 12, where the inclusion of additional lines of evidence increases confidence in the assessed likely range for ECS. …
Read more: Page 871 WG1 AR5 Chapter 10
The study seems to ignore the qualitative impact of technology advances on productivity, even advances which are obviously in the pipeline. Study authors suggest that some outdoor activities such as agriculture and assembly lines are difficult to air-condition, but its more than obvious even today that robots are completely transforming outdoor work. My trash these days is collected by an operator in an air-conditioned truck who picks up trashcans with a robot arm; the days of groups of men following trucks, picking up trashcans by hand, are long gone.
Predicting economic conditions at the end of the century in terms of today’s society is absurd. By the end of the century our descendants will enjoy technologies and productivity advantages we have no idea will exist. Even if temperatures do rise uncomfortably, it is very unlikely farmers 80 years from now will simply put up with any problems, instead of trying to address them.
Update (EW): Clarified that the statistical insignificance of the post 1990 impact of temperature on productivity applies to fall temperatures rather than Summer temperatures
The real issue is that water vapor ‘feedback’ to increased heat is not positive causing more heating it is negative so cooling – as Willis has repeatedly shown. Hence, the entire logic of the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis causing a runaway catastrophic warming is incorrect.
Also see this at Tallbloke’s Talkshop:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2018/05/12/alan-carlin-both-sides-ignore-the-major-finding-of-recent-climate-research/
Meanwhile back in the real world,summertime temperatures in the Southeast are much lower nowadays than in the 1920s to 1950s:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/regional/time-series/104/tmax/3/8/1895-2018?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000
Paul Homewood – 2:21 … summertime temperatures in the Southeast are much lower nowadays than in the 1920s to 1950s
Here’s what that looks like:
http://oi67.tinypic.com/10er3ps.jpg
Most of that blue area has been on the decline since the 19th century.
Interesting map.
There’s also the curiosity that Miami has never recorded a 100F temperature while Denver has had a streak of five days in a row with 100F+ temperatures.
Thomas Homer – 3:19 am
Interesting statistic (-:
I am always amazed how air temperatures know exactly where state borders are.
Tom in Florida – I am always amazed how air temperatures know exactly where state borders are.
First chuckle of the day (-:
+1 Steve Case
Contrived circular reasoning and arm waving….
Warmists rely on fallacies to build their “angels dancing on pinhead” scenarios.
Every bit of the money the Fed, IMF, EU crntral bank, etc. spends on studies like this is money being diverted from useful work.
That a parasitic fear monger like Nucciteli uses a study like this to justify his magical thinking is not surprising.
The only reason anyone voluntarily pays a tax is in expectation of a greater return. Paying a tax to have your garbage picked up is cheaper than hauling it yourself. Since the so called benefits of locals paying a carbon tax would be distributed world wide, the local return would be their fraction of the global benefit. Zilch to none. On a larger scale, this is why no one country will damage itself to benefit the rest. China demanding cash for cooperation is just tit for tat. This is why all climate negotiations must and will fail the more specific they become.
Dana Nut,, Michael Mann, Seb Hensbeth (Bloomberg Finance Renewables) and what was the British guy who wrote/still writes for the Guardian in Oz all co-ordinated /conspired together to drop climate change and renewable propaganda into the media.There are several more that others will name, that in another time would have been hoisted high by the populace for they have done.
Nutticelli has been around for a long time, spewing his global warming nonsense. This is from 2013:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/05/the-self-induced-implosion-of-dana-nuccitelli/#comment-1493151
[excerpt]
There are lots of Nutticelli’s out there – wild people who believe in wild weather – inciters of the Warmist Brown Shirts.
Over a decade ago (circa 2002), I wrote an article in the National Post, saying that Canada should not ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
I soon received an angry, threatening email from someone who held me personally responsible for the flooding of the Prague.
I replied:
“Dear Sir, you are entirely correct.
I am the One fully responsible for the flooding of Prague.
Now “frac off” or I’ll do it again.”
Allan
Hehehe……..”I’ll do it again”.
Love it.
Hello HotScot my friend,
Yes, only one threat in all these years, now decades of fighting global warming nonsense.
My friend Dr. Tim Ball gets many threats every year – but then he lives in BC – the wacky wet Left Coast as we call here in sunny Alberta. I feel under-appreciated by these warmist thugs. Am I not worthy? 🙂
Mind you, people who make threats are not the real issue. I ran a project in Kazakstan that was later sold for US$4.2 billion. The Russian mafias are a much more serious group, and they rarely make threats – they visit you and make “suggestions” – like “we suggest that you sell us your project for 10 cents on the dollar”. One should take their suggestions seriously. A friend-of-a-friend did not do so – look up Paul Tatum, Moscow for the story.
I had a much easier time in Kaz – just two armed invasions of my facilities in the first two years – I managed them both with no police or army intervention, and everyone got to go home – even the bad guys. Just another day at the office…
UN Environment / Search
UNEP-SBCI (Sustainable Buildings and Climate Initiative).
5 SBCI topics including the Kyoto Protocol. Click on any topic.
https://www.unenvironment.org/search/node?keys=UNEP+SBCI
business.un.org
Archived content
Partnership Story
‘UNEP-SBCI: Advancing Sustainability in the Building Sector’
Summary
https://business.un.org/en/documents/10372
Webpage has links to more SBCI information.
Never mind that the predictions are based on faulty modelling.
Nah, this is all wrong. If you PAY a carbon tax, you will get pounded by the Egyptian god Shu and his sister Tefnut, their father Atum, and by Uranus, the god of lightning and storms and stuff like that.
That cold front that’s been sitting on my area since March is still sticking around. Just keeping track. The temperature is going up? Not in my kingdom, it isn’t.
Is there any way to put a bee in Nuccatelli’s bonnet?
Sara wrote:
“Is there any way to put a bee in Nuccatelli’s bonnet?”
Suggestion:
Pray to Uranus, Patron Saint of the Prostate, on behalf of Nutticelli.
How can I trust your analysis, Sara, when you don’t know that Thor is the true god of lightning? What other science are you getting wrong?
What’s this about Uranus? I think you’re talking through your, uh, hat. 🙂
rich Davis: Thor is the Viking god of lightning and thunder. Uranus is the Greek varietal. The Lakota refer to him as Haokah.
Surely thunderbolts are the weapons of Zeus?
Zeus gets them from Uranus. (There are soooo many puns here!)
I like bad girls, Sara.
Susan Howard, yes, Zeus throws thunderbolts… and Uranus is the old Greek god of the sky – he was essentially Zeus’ grandfather. Zeus took over Olympus from his father, Cronus, and became god of the sky, thunder, lightning, justice, etc.
Uranus was married to his mother, Gaia, (yes, Greek gods were incestuous) and sired the Titans. Cronus, the youngest Titan, at his mother’s behest, castrated Uranus… (yes, Greek gods were brutal)
Sooo, that means Uranus is all he had left…
Thunder.
I have Viking ancestors, so clearly Thor is the only true one. All the others are made up by people who don’t have credentials, junk science probably paid for by oil interests. The Science is settled. I guess you’re a science d-nier.
It’s an epidemic of dishonesty from the climate scare cabal.
May they implode and find themselves in a quandary because no one is listening to them. No one. Not even ants.
Maybe that’s what Bloomberg was talking about in his commencement speech the other day.
“This effect is particularly strong for the summer: a 1oF increase in the average summer temperature is associated with a reduction in the annual growth rate of state-level output of 0.15 to 0.25 percentage points. We combine our estimates with projected increases in seasonal temperatures and find that rising temperatures could reduce U.S. economic growth by up to one-third over the next century.”
Is this some kind of new math? One degree warmer in the summer is claimed to lead to a 0.25% decrease in annual economic growth. In order to produce a 33% reduction in annual economic growth, over the next century, The summer temperatures would have to rise 132 degrees F, based on this relationship!!!!! Ridiculous! How does he get to a possible 33% reduction in economic growth?
Secondly, what happens to annual economic growth if the one degree of warming is applied throughout the year, and not just in the summer? According to the theory of AGW, the warming should be more prevalent in the winter and at night, which would produce significant economic benefits to the great majority of the country; indeed, the great majority of the world!
jclarke341
The concept of the USA losing 33% of productivity over the next 100 years, whilst population increases, is just insane.
What planet does this idiot live on?
HotScot
Productivity growth has nothing to do with population increase or decrease.
Productivity is an economic measure of output per unit of input.
and the Inputs include labor and capital.
The more specific labor productivity
would be the output of goods & services (GDP)
per worker, or better yet, per hour of work.
The total output of goods and services
is affected by population growth,
assuming populations growth
increases the size of the labor force.
Economics lecture over.
You can wake up now.
Richard Greene
It was an offhand expression of contempt.
However, to imagine that humans will put in one third less effort, consume one third less food, use one third less resources or enjoy one third less of life over the coming 100 years is preposterous.
Man is predisposed to work harder when times get hard. The only imaginable way man, as an individual, would produce one third less of anything is if AI and automation took quantum leaps forward and the individual was compelled to work for 3 only days out of five (roughly speaking) without loss of wealth. Even then, I strongly suspect man would turn his attention to other means of productivity as most people enjoy being productive otherwise, why do they engage in activities on their days off and not just sit on their backsides?
Economic productivity measurements take no account of motivation, opportunity nor desire. They are a convenient, oversimplified metric which appeal to politicians who are invariably unqualified to practise politics because, by its very nature, anyone should have the opportunity to achieve political status. Metrics are therefore boiled down to oversimplified sound bites politicians frequently abuse because they don’t understand them.
He’s using the old tactic of exaggerating the effect of small numbers by talking about a percentage change rather than an absolute change. When something goes from 0.00030 to 0.00041, people tend to yawn and say 0.00011, so what? So instead they create charts scaled to make the rise seem scary steep and they talk about a huge unprecedented 37% rise. (To use CO2 as an example).
The 0.25% figure is supposed to be the absolute change in the annual growth rate from say 3% down to 2.75%. Then he says 0.25/3 = 0.08, an 8% decrease in growth rate. But that’s hardly enough to sound like a problem. So apparently 33% assumes a lower Obamaesque base such as 0.75% annual growth, or a bigger impact from runaway warming such as 1% reduction on a 3% base.
Lies and phantasies in any case.
How could anyone scientfically inclined use a 90% confidence interval? Even a 95% confidence interval is just a rule of thumb that something might be happening. An on regression analysis is evev worse. Did he never learn that a regression can never predict beyond the last data point?
Pure supposition from the first sentence. Don’t they realize that people have been working in difficult condition for thousands of years? There are well-established procedures for handling work in any difficult conditions without harming the employees and minimizing productivity losses.
The precision of the effect on the economy and economic is infinitely better than the best economists while at the same time the climate scientists prediction of climate is less accurate than the typical 3 day weather forecast – The irony
This guy is totally nuts. He believes that “…thermal systems do not contain “memory” of past climate states …“ So how can the climate system 50 years from now know what we are pumping into the system today. And what about peer-review of “scientific” papers? Do we believe in that Mr Nuccitelli?
Give him a break, perhaps he just needed some attention.
Does this mean that people who move from a cold area to a warm area should never be hired since the warmer temperatures could have a negative impact on their production?
Debunked simply by the fact that no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since 1993.
What’s the Stanley Cup? 🙂
Trophy awarded to the champion of the National Hockey League. Only teams located south of the Canadian border (that’s the U.S. for all you millennials) have won it since 1993. It is the hardest trophy to win in professional sports.
“It is the hardest trophy to win in professional sports.”
Oh really? I’d like to see those ice-skate-shod mongrels try to make touchdowns in the next Super Bowl.
/s
Especially if they are still wearing those ice skates.
Quoting Eric Worrall ………….
OH, NO, NO, ……nothing dubious about it iffen you’re looking at the “lost productivity” problem through the eyes of the authors of the published study, to wit: Riccardo Colacito, Bridget Hoffmann, Toan Phan
Those three (3) authors surely had their eyeballs focused on the I-90 Corridor that connects Albany to Buffalo, a locale that once was, up until the mid-1980’s, home of a few million high-paying manufacturing, support and service jobs, ….. but is now pretty much a “ghost corridor” of shuttered factory doors and “boarded-up” doors n’ windows of the once thriving wholesale, retail and service sector.
And “YUP”, the demise of the once highly productive I-90 Corridor was directly the fault of “high taxes” and “seasonal temperatures” that resulted in a significant and systematic effects on the Upstate NY economy.
Shur nuff, extremely high taxes on most everything in New York State …… and the mild, to warm, to hot “seasonal temperatures” in the US southeast are the primary reasons for the outmigration of New York’s “productivity” to the southeast US and/or “across the pond” to foreign soil.
Samuel,
I retired from Eastman Kodak a few years before it imploded. I thought it’s fall from being perennially one of the nations top companies to a virtual non entity was the incompetence of management;
….when all along it was Global Warming!
You are right, George,
GE in Syracuse, Utica and Schenectady, ….. Carrier in Syracuse, ….. Chicago-Pneumatic in Utica, ….. Remington Arms in Ilion, …….. MDS, Library Bureau and Standard Furniture in Herkimer are but a few of the many that Global Warming made it “too hot” for them to survive those cold, cold winters.
An economist weighing in on climate change? What next, a phrenologist paper on astrology?
Goes to show that carbon taxes and the like are the end goals, not the means to attain goals. Its is actually a reversal of what is presented. Emissions guilt is the means to attain the taxation and regulations ends.
The real issue is that water vapor ‘feedback’ to increased heat is not positive causing more heating, it is negative causing cooling – as Willis has repeatedly shown. Hence, the entire logic of the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis causing a runaway catastrophic warming is incorrect.
Has Nuccitelli ever ventured outside of academia (if you can call it that in his world)? Has he ever developed a product that works and that people want to buy (apart from a few freaks + BBC who buy the Guardian). Perhaps he should try and see if his opinion changes over a decade or two. The biggest threat to productivity is taxation and an expanding bureaucracy hence the opposition to Brexit (etc) by those comfortable with living off growth generated by others.
I think the Morning Star was probably more accurate than the Guardian.
Aren’t these the same guys that believe that the fact that solar and wind need more workers per MW produced is a good thing?
apparently math is hard for economists … a 1/3 reduction in output by the end of the century … 33% … at .25% per degree means they think the temperature could rise 132 degrees …
The American south is for the most part, very humid as well.
Even the IPCC acknowledges that humid areas will see the least impact from more CO2 in the atmosphere.
” … extremely unlikely to be less than 1°C and medium confidence that the ECS is likely to be between 1.5°C and 4.5°C and very unlikely greater than 6°C.”
The scientific truth is that the ECS is absolutely certain to be less than the lower limit of 1.5C suggested by the IPCC, moreover; the ONLY constraint ever applied to this limit by the IPCC was that it had to be large enough to justify the formation, continued existence and agenda of the IPCC/UNFCCC.
Hahahaha, ok then, next wild tale? Humour and funny stories put a smile on my face in the morning.
Is it just natural that the position of A.G. attracts so many psychopaths? These individuals are straight out of a gestopo casting call.
Dana knows bomb throwing. That’s about it.
Ever wonder who builds the bombs for him? None of these people are bright enough to do this on their own…..