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.
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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
No wonder Rep. Scalise was targeted at the ball field. He is trying to stop the nut jobs with legislation.
Hiya Di, any chance you could rustle up some new news? Life’s getting a bit short for some of us.
There’s a good little boy….
I really couldn’t care less what this nutcase says. It’s not even funny anymore.
Meh……. estimates, projections, and statistical flatulence!
And all of this bloviating, to advocate for reducing atmospheric plant food?
To quote WWII General Anthony Clement McAuliffe: “Nuts!”
Dana Nuccitelli writes poorly and irrationally as he does so often such as this barrage of irrational baloney he published a while back:
Here’s what happens when you try to replicate climate contrarian papers
“Those who reject the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming often invoke Galileo as an example of when the scientific minority overturned the majority view. In reality, climate contrarians have almost nothing in common with Galileo, whose conclusions were based on empirical scientific evidence, supported by many scientific contemporaries, and persecuted by the religious-political establishment. Nevertheless, there’s a slim chance that the 2–3% minority is correct and the 97% climate consensus is wrong.
To evaluate that possibility, a new paper published in the journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology examines a selection of contrarian climate science research and attempts to replicate their results. The idea is that accurate scientific research should be replicable, and through replication we can also identify any methodological flaws in that research. The study also seeks to answer the question, why do these contrarian papers come to a different conclusion than 97% of the climate science literature?
This new study was authored by Rasmus Benestad, myself (Dana Nuccitelli), Stephan Lewandowsky, Katharine Hayhoe, Hans Olav Hygen, Rob van Dorland, and John Cook. Benestad (who did the lion’s share of the work for this paper) created a tool using the R programming language to replicate the results and methods used in a number of frequently-referenced research papers that reject the expert consensus on human-caused global warming. In using this tool, we discovered some common themes among the contrarian research papers.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/aug/25/heres-what-happens-when-you-try-to-replicate-climate-contrarian-papers
See that right of the bat he pushed the irrelevant 97% consensus as if that was a rational argument on how we do science.
The contents of his baloney are a long line of dishonest and stupid arguments, while leaving out the obvious contrary evidence that utterly destroy his whole article.
I made a short and simple reply to Dana’s silly consensus babble:
http://www.usmessageboard.com/threads/extreme-weather-events-that-show-agw.672830/page-3#post-19666637
Some days I think nobody could be so stupid as to believe the kind of things Nuccitelli writes about. He must be under contract as highly paid, if warped, a fiction writer. Do we look for Russian money here too?
“. . . a highly paid, if warped, fiction write. “
“writer.” Got it.
Dr Nutty wrote: ”The results, reported in figure 3 show that the summer coefficient remains negative and statistically significant at the 10% level as the sample shrinks.”
Translation: After we tortured the data the best we could, we got summer significance results down to the p=0.10 level. Good enough for economics to publish.
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On a related note, I can’t help but belly laugh at Dr. Nutty’s ridiculous “Red States will suffer more” assertion. Has anyone told Dr Nutty that middle and upper income folks, along with small and medium size businesses, are fleeing the Blue state havens of California, Illinois, New York, Connecticut?
And where are they headed? Mostly Texas, Florida, Indiana, Ohio — states that went strongly Trump in 2016. Apparently they don’t give a crap about the alarmist fake climate change rants from the Left. They are fleeing precisely because of and to get away from the consequences of the socialist Left’s policy prescriptions of more taxes, more regulations, higher energy prices.
And that’s not some economist’s theoretical prediction. It’s happening, and being documented with hard data every month, month after month — folks who can are fleeing Blue America. And the reason: taxes too high. And every economist who studies this sees it is about to get a whole lot worse for the Blue States due to Congress’s recent tax code revisions.
And because they cannot admit the obvious (that educated workers and retirees are fleeing because of their policies, high taxes, and destruction of affordable living), how are the trying to level the playing field? By writing crap papers like the one here by Dr Nutty to try and get Red States to join them in drinking their Jimmy Jones Klimate Koolaid.
Dr Nutty is most definitely that IYI that Nassim Taleb describes.
Yes what Dana is saying would make a lot of sense to those that want a communal society.
And, those that want to be taken care of by government.
Mostly those that are just too Lazy to fend for themselves.
Here’s a thought: People with low body fat do not get overheated to the extent and for the duration that people with higher body fat do. Global warming, thus, would seem to be a clear motivation to shed those extra pounds to stay a little less heat stressed. Al Gore, are you reading ?
“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.”
We’ve been able to see the consequences of this effect on world food production recently:
http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/
Natural vegetation has responded loud and clear………around the globe:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
But instead of looking at what’s actually happening………………let’s believe a simulation of climate going out 100 years, using mathematical equations to represent a speculative(busted) theory and global climate model projections that have been too warm.
The Red states are going to have economic growth precisely because of the Blue states adoption of public policies and higher taxes. Those polices include sanctuary for illegal aliens, encouraging homeless camps and drug use with needle and relaxing drug laws, that are slowly turning the public schools and cities and communities in 3rd world hell holes.
The Red States will grow because they are affordable and offer good quality of living, free from sanctuary lawlessness and homeless camps and the drugs they bring.
The Blue States are going to undergo quite painful loses of tax revenue that they cannot afford due to the high costs of their public unions and out of control social programs. The residents fleeing the Blue States are bringing their money and skills with them to the Red States to buy homes, start businesses, and then pay local taxes there.
I was just reading an explanation of carbon tax at some website dedicated to the whole idea, and I was impressed by how ignorant of CO2 the founders and supporters of the website are. They seem to think that CO2 from fossil-fuel use accumulates into an isolated layer at the top of Earth’s atmosphere, acting like a barrier that traps heat radiating from the planet’s surface.
Passion is based on ignorance, misinformation, flawed assumptions, and unwillingness to examine facts.
Such ignorance is what truly punishes Trump voters.
It punishes the Blue State voters even more fortunately.
Let’s get people to cut back on their use of fossil fuels by taxing them…….make cheap, reliable and abundant fossil fuels more expensive……………that’s how we grow the economy.
Hugh???
Too bad we can’t go back to the 1850 atmosphere, before the industrial revolution. Drop CO2 levels back under 300 ppm and a global temperature 1 Deg. C cooler…………….and have over a billion people starve to death with food prices tripling!!!
They continually tell us that the polar regions will warm faster. In fact, the theory indicates that the tropics will barely warm at all. This whole study is based on false assumptions.
“…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….”
Oh how scientific of them. Why not contact some auto manufacturers or facilities and find out instead of guessing? It’s called…um….research.
And duh there are “limitations of air conditioning.” The limitation is in the design and installation of the HVAC system. If you want to operate at cooler temps or on hotter days with loading and unloading bay doors open, you have to design for that. If it instead is more cost-effective to slow or shutter production on a few hot days per year, then that’s the route you take.
You dont need 1000 follow up comments
Just one
ECOBOLLOX.
‘..Predicting economic conditions at the end of the century in terms of today’s society is absurd…’ (above)
Really nothing more needs to be said — that the subject of this discussion kicks up any ‘debate dust’ at all is an embarrassment!
No “debate dust” on MY part. Just entertainment at the expense of ignorance.
If they are so clever they can run comparisons of economic activity against temperature to determine the relationship, why can’t they run CO2 against temperature to deduce the warming and feedback factors from empirical evidence, instead of dubious models?
I will tell you why: the warming effect is so low as to be an embarrassment to the cause.
“…failing to curb global warming will certainly lead to less economic growth.”
“Climate policies could hamper economic growth.”
Dana has that backwards. Climate policies that increase taxes and energy prices WILL CERTAINLY lead to less economic growth. There’s no way around it. Failing to take steps to curb global warming MAY hamper economic growth, buy the jury is still out on that. We still don’t know how much of recent warming is due to natural climate cycles and how much is due to increases in CO2. We also don’t know if continued warming will be harmful or net beneficial to the planet as a whole. Increased growing seasons and crop yields could offset any negative consequences of a few degrees of warming, should they actually occur. Only time will tell. So why should we take the steps Dana proposes, which we know will harm economic growth, rather than wait until we know enough to make an informed decision?
“to prevent slowed economic growth in red states, they should be trying to craft an optimal carbon tax”
An optimal one would fall on blue states only, congress took a step in this direction when they limited the deductibility of state and local taxes.
The idea of a tax deductible tax is absurd on its face (unless both taxes are created by the same body). It amounts to say that democracy is not a thing and that taxes are not a kind of voluntary collective purchase, a price for state services (democracy really is broken everywhere, because politics is swampy – making taxes deductible from taxes makes it swampier).
Dana’s whole argument is flawed. Introducing a carbon tax to slow economic growth because eventually global warming will do it anyway is the same as saying “let’s fix the problem before there even is a problem.” A bad way to conduct oneself in any area of life.
Carbon taxes have not now will they be effective in reducing the use of fossil fuels. For most people, the only thing that they can do in response to the tax is to consume less which puts a damper on economic growth. LIke in my case, I need by car to conduct business and take care of errands. I have no practical alternative. I have to heat my house when it gets cold outside and I have to have electricity of run lights and appliances in my home. Most of the products that I use are transported into the town where I live by truck. I cannot do without food and clothing. So a carbon tax is just another tax that we would have to endure.
The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. So even if we could stop all use of fossil fuels the climate would continue to change unabated. But even if we could stop the climate changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue unabated because they are part of the current climate so there is no real benefit is stopping the climate from changing. The optimal climate has yet to be identified, let alone discovering how to achieve it.
People may need to work more to offset the carbon tax, and they may need more gasoline if their work involve their car!
“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.”
It also means that US automakers do their annual model year factory shutdowns in the summer, when they have more workers on vacation because the worker’s kids are out of school.
Complete and utter junk science.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/regional/time-series/104/tmax/3/9/1895-2018?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000
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