Guest essay by Eric Worrall
President Trump’s administration has struck back at the Fourth National Climate Assessment, claiming that the report was rigged to disregard reasonable responses to warmer temperatures.
Clashing with Trump, U.S. government report says climate change will batter economy
(Reuters) – Climate change will cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century, hitting everything from health to infrastructure, according to a government report issued on Friday that the White House called inaccurate.
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The studies clash with policy under President Donald Trump, who has been rolling back Obama-era environmental and climate protections to maximize production of domestic fossil fuels, including crude oil, already the highest in the world, above Saudi Arabia and Russia.
White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said the new report was “largely based on the most extreme scenario, which contradicts long-established trends by assuming that…there would be limited technology and innovation, and a rapidly expanding population.”
The government’s next update of the National Climate Assessment, she said, “gives us the opportunity to provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes.”
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We’ve seen this kind of baseless scaremongering before, like with the “End of Beer” story which was floating around a month ago.
As the Brewers Association pointed out, a key flawed assumption with the “end of beer” prediction was that farmers would attempt no adaption whatsoever to changed circumstances, they would keep attempting to grow Barley in exactly the same way as today with no attempt to change growing regions or planting times to match the new temperature range.
Predicting the “end of beer” while disregarding the option of adapting to changed circumstances is like predicting everyone who jumps into water will drown, because you are disregarding the possibility people in water will attempt to swim and stay afloat.
It is easy to predict bad outcomes, if you rig the report process to ignore other possibilities.
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Ok WTF, please cite a paper (properly written, of course) that gives experimental evidence or real-world data proving that RCP8.5 has any reasonable probability (> 20%?) of playing out 20 years from now, let alone 20 years from now. You can start by going back to the original creation of 8.5, and provide a simple graph of current global temps (UAH please, no cheating) vs. the original RCP 8.5 projections (average of multi-model runs would be fine). Since all the scary projections in the NCA were based on 8.5, the exercise I’m suggesting will help us know how to correctly treat the conclusions.
If you want my help on this exercise, I’m happy to provide it, but frankly, I think it’s best for you to do it as a way to learn to not be so trigger happy with your cheap shots
Some Trump relatives are warmists—a desire not to offend them and maybe have them turn against him is likely a factor in his pussy-footing. His chief of staff Kelly bruskly informed Pruitt that his red/blue team idea was scratched. Maybe Trump doesn’t want to have to bone up on a complicated subject, but is so insecure he doesn’t want to let anyone else be his spokesperson on the topic. Or maybe his political advisors have (mis)calculated that the issue is a tarbaby better not touched.
Of course, this isn’t the only dumb move (or inaction) Trump has made.
Better sources needed, however a remote friend working there claims that every polar native soul north of NWT (meaning: bitter cold) totals a structural yearly cost to the government in excess of 1M $.
Which would set the costs of cold (and it’s impact on everything) to more than astronomical levels in comparison with much hotter regions.
Trump would do better by not attacking a report that no-one reads. Instead he could ridicule media about the unsubstantiated fear mongering propaganda. Weather in the USA is now cold, climate is stable and vegetation loves CO2.
Let’s go one better, our food likes it warm and CO2 rich..
If US sceptics insist on doing nothing to mitigate the effects of climate change, then they are no better – in fact probably even worse – than the socialists in Ayn Rand’s ‘novel Atlas Shrugged’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged) who are determined to bring down their nation’s economy:
The Report’s summary findings ref. the US economy:
“Without substantial and sustained global mitigation and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century.
In the absence of significant global mitigation action and regional adaptation efforts, rising temperatures, sea level rise, and changes in extreme events are expected to increasingly disrupt and damage critical infrastructure and property, labor productivity, and the vitality of our communities. Regional economies and industries that depend on natural resources and favorable climate conditions, such as agriculture, tourism, and fisheries, are vulnerable to the growing impacts of climate change. Rising temperatures are projected to reduce the efficiency of power generation while increasing energy demands, resulting in higher electricity costs. The impacts of climate change beyond our borders are expected to increasingly affect our trade and economy, including import and export prices and U.S. businesses with overseas operations and supply chains. Some aspects of our economy may see slight near-term improvements in a modestly warmer world. However, the continued warming that is projected to occur without substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy throughout this century, especially in the absence of increased adaptation efforts. With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century—more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states.”
Oh please! Ivan, this dire and virtually unsubstantiated set of assumptions is based on RCP8.5. Please have a look at that and let us know if it has any realistic chance of being accurate before you pontificate. That scenario has been scientifically discredited and has no place in serious discussion about the future. I doubt it will appear seriously in the next IPCC reports. That they would use such a scenario in the NCA is just testimony as to how desperate the ‘climate swamp’ has gotten, a true last ditch effort to scare us into doing something foolish.
If you want to take action, try adaptation, not mitigation, a lot cheaper, and no big deal if you’re wrong…
… climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century.
Upon what evidence is this expectation based ? The evidence seems very weak or non-existent. At best, it seems willed into being, following biased hunches that get incorporated into models that propagate the bias, through inappropriate, erroneous redefinition of basic concepts.
C’mon, trace the claims all the way down to the hard evidence. You can’t do it, because solid evidence does NOT exist. And fabricated language expressing confidence levels is just that — fabricated language — designed to capture people’s attention and lead them to follow somebody’s emotionally preferred course of actions.
The government report is pure crap, … built upon crap.
Piffle.
View the report’s conclusions in light of the IPCC’s SR15; it showed the costs of doing anything meaningful are astronomically high such as to be impossible.
Ivan Kinsman , after 50 years of doom, gloom and lies…I just don’t care.
Perhaps we are reading the report wrong….maybe “the hundreds of billions of dollars” is the amount needed by the Alarmists in the coming years, to convince us that what they predict to happen ‘is always just around the corner’.
You might not but fortunately millions do, and are taking concrete action instead of sitting in front of their pcs debating the issue.
I did not bother to read the national climate assessment report because it is obviously a skewed, biased, one-sided propagandistic diatribe.
Anybody with even the most basic scientific education understands that the earth has been changing constantly over its multibillion year lifetime, and that all changes create winners and losers. The winners either favor the change, or are more adaptable to the change, and the losers fail to adapt and die out. Ditto with economics – if the earth warms, it will create winners and losers, and if the earth cools, it will create winners and losers. The only change that creates winners only does not exist … and the only change that creates losers only would be one that entirely destroys the biosphere, such as another planet collides with the earth.
For every dollar lost to the economy by a warming climate, it is vastly more likely that more dollars will be created. But until a study group truly looks for all the winners, as well as the losers, and tallies up both sides of the results, then it is just political propaganda.
Piffle. Balderdash. Warmistas are so very dumb.
Sorry. Cancel the abuse.
I cannot stand the idiocy coming from the hoodwinked BELIEVERS. The blaming of the fires on CO2 and everything else that happens that is bad. It makes me want to just go about life lying at every turn to benefit myself and screw honesty.
32yr in the field meteorologist.