David Wojick
This preposterous claim shows the dangerous absurdity of the “loss and damage” doctrine. At this rate of damage the global total would run around TWO HUNDRED TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. There is not that much money in the whole world.
The $800 billion a year is from a report presented by Colombia at COP27. The mainstream green press either did not notice or decided to ignore it, lest it raise issues best left alone until the proposed UN Loss and Damage Facility is created.
Look at it this way. Colombia is a relatively small country with a GDP of around $300 billion a year, about the 40th largest in the world and just 0.4% of the global total. Its “loss and damage” claim is roughly 2.5 times its GDP, so let’s assume that ratio globally.
World GDP is about $81 trillion, which multiplied by 2.5 equals just over $200 trillion a year.
Here are some large developing country examples, using the 2.5 times GDP estimate, rounded off. (GDP is from 2017)
Estimated “loss and damages” from human caused climate chaos:
India $6.6 trillion a year
Brazil $5.1 trillion a year
Mexico $2.9 trillion a year
Indonesia $2.5 trillion a year
Argentina $1.6 trillion a year
Iran $1.1 trillion a year
Obviously these numbers are absurd as far as reparations go. Of course they are also absurd as far as human caused climate damages are concerned, but that is a very different issue, since they well might still be claimed. When it comes to the UN, absurdity is no obstacle.
These enormous numbers dwarf the present COP27 negotiations, where the finance issue is maybe upping total financial flows from $100 billion a year to $1 trillion. None of that is for so-called “loss and damage”, which is extra. Note that even the $100 billion has never been paid.
Before the “loss and damage” talks proceed we should ask “What kind of money are we talking about?” Because there is no point in talking about paying the developing countries hundreds of trillions of dollars. It cannot happen.
That no numbers have been included in the “reparations” laden news coverage is significant. Why this preposterous Colombian claim did not make headlines is itself a telling question. I found it buried as the third story in a newsletter from the Climate Home News (CHN).
See https://mailchi.mp/climatehome/everybody-needs-good-neighbours?e=edd9ee2911
One would expect the big green media like the Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, CNN and the Guardian to be all over this story. I am sure their climate reporters all read CHN. But it might scare developed countries away from the table, right? And we just got them there, right? Best be quiet.
Of course it is possible that Colombia is just an astronomical outlier. In other words a crook. Maybe no other developing country is going to come up with absurd numbers like this. Well we should certainly wait and see.
According to the CHN article, the Interamerican Development Band is sponsoring similar “loss and damage” analyses by Panama and Peru. We should at least wait until these numbers come out before entering into any negotiations. After all, if their numbers are like Colombia’s then there is nothing to negotiate.
As an aside, it may well be that the banks love these big numbers because they would get to handle the action. And when it comes to reparations, the more the better, right?
Speaking of nothing to negotiate, there have been several token contributions to a future UN “loss and damage” fund. I think at least Denmark, New Zealand and Scotland have each promised $10 million or so. Compared to the astounding Colombian numbers this is as nothing, a tiny fraction of round off error, as it were.
As a final thought, how can a country consistently lose over twice its GDP each year and still survive? Surely this is a hoax.
No negotiation should proceed until the numbers are known.
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/ Available for confidential research and consulting.
There’s no way the tax dollars should be transferred from the Developed World to any of these long-established kleptocracies so that they can supposedly take climate action. The money will wind up in the personal bank accounts of their leaders or it will go to finance their armies and police forces to enable them to stay in power.
Estimated “loss and damages” from human caused climate chaos:
India $6.6 trillion a year
…India GDP $2.65 trillion per year
Brazil $5.1 trillion a year
…Brazil GDP $2.04 trillion per year
Mexico $2.9 trillion a year
…Mexico GDP $1.15 trillion per year
Indonesia $2.5 trillion a year
…Indonesia GDP $1.015 trillion per year
Argentina $1.6 trillion a year
…Argentina GDP $637 billion per year
Iran $1.1 trillion a year
…Iran GDP $454 billion per year
Columbia GDP $314 billion per year (how much does Coca bring in when they add the “ine”?)
At those figures the USA has a GDP of $19.485 trillion per year so we should claim about $60T a year against the climate fund
US GDP is $25,663 trillion, in 2022 dollars, as of 3Q 2022
Almost 40% is government spending for all levels of government
You can’t touch that !
Yep, turns out my figures were from 2017
Columbian officials are ROTFLOL shrieking “they actually took us seriously!!”
This is nothing more than nations with their feet on the ground informing the idiots at COP27 that they are as sick of all this crap as the rest of us.
God I love it. You go Columbia!
I have never traveled to Columbia but how can any country claim loss and damage caused by climate change .
There is no way that any country can prove that emissions from other countries have caused the climate to change in their country .
Have the Colombians been using fossil fuel at around the same ratio as many other countries .
Columbia and every other country has had immense benefit from using fossil fuel .
Just take a minute to think rationally that the worlds poulation has increased from around 2.5 billion in 1950 to pass the 8 billion mark this week.
How could those extra 5.5 billion people have been fed and housed without fossil fuel ?
The facts are quite clear that over half of the 8 billion rely on natural gas which is essential to manufacture nitrogenous fertilizer which grows over half of the food on this planet .
Of course facts don”t matter when politicians think that they can get other countries to pay them a ransom.
How much of these reparations will go to the people who are really in need ?
It would be hard to travel to Columbia. Colombia, on the other hand…
Well, in terms of “climate,” there AREN’T any people who are “really in need,” since the “climate” isn’t doing anything “bad,” misattribution of every “bad weather event” to “climate change” notwithstanding.
Fact is, the warming of the climate since the depths of the Little Ice Age has been 100% beneficial, and the imaginary “harm” caused by fossil fuel use is MASSIVELY OVERWHELMED by the BENEFITS of using fossil fuels.
So there’s that…
Biden is reaching for the check book as I type this.
AOC and her group of radical Democrats are encoraging the U.S. to pay CO2 reparations.
The United States should not be paying anything to anyone with regard to CO2 damage because there is no evidence atmospheric CO2 has caused any harm to human beings. No provable damage has been caused.
CO2 Reparations is a Scam and a Fraud.
And since AOC/Occasional Cortex was so incensed about some tax credits being given to a business to locate in her district as an incentive for said business to choose to locate there, why would she support “reparations ” for the completely fictional “harm” of “climate change?!”
After all, the only people benefitting are the wealthy she hates so much, who are the only ones profiting from the boondoggles of 17th century power sources.
So, a reduction of what the government TAKES is offensive, but let’s just throw money at people FOR NOTHING.
I guess that’s the type of divorced-from-logic-and-reason “thinking” to expect from someone stupid enough to believe you can just print all the money you want without any consequences.
Don’t tell me-
Trudeau said Canada’s good for it.
Xi wasn’t too happy with Justin yesterday.
Can an individual make a claim or do you have to be a country?
I have proof that I am getting older every day and I am certain it is due to climate change.
If your forefathers invented the steam engine then you have to pay the money instead of receiving it….
My family have been impoverished since the Little Ice Age due to climate change
When do I get my cheque and can it be backdated, please?
So the West allowed the UN to saddle them with promises of money that they aren’t keeping and now the UN is trying to shame them into paying up. What fools put themselves in that position?
Or … what is the difference between US and world lifestyle? US population 330 million, GDP was $23T last year, call it $25T this year. Extrapolating to the entire world population of 8 billion would be a GDP of $600T. Colombia’s population is 50M, 15% of the US, so their adjusted GDP should be $4T. I’d say they are woefully underestimating the reparations due; should be around $3.5T.
Not so. In the Biden era, the central banks can create as much money as they choose.
That is the stupidity of putting a dollar value on reparations. The only real currency in the modern world is energy. They should be demanding reparations in energy or energy equivalent. Maybe 10 nuclear power plants for example.
I would be more inclined to go into most of those countries and build them an electricity generation facility rather than hand them the money required to do so. Or build a Sea Wall to protect low lying zones rather than give them the money to do so. I would make sure though that the materials and labor are sourced by my country so any money spent remains as wealth in my country.
Build them a sewage system and fresh water supply. The single most effective way of saving lives.. .
Now come on Dodgy, you know this is not about saving lives, it is about saving the Planet!
We need to cut out those nuisance people getting in the way and just pour the £trillions down a big hole in the ground and give Gaia its due directly….
Close…
Try ‘Soil Organic Matter‘ instead and we’re rolling….
Really rolling.
Better yet, we could just build a bunch of nuclear power plants, scrap all the wind and solar stupidity, declare the imaginary “climate crisis” solved and tell all the climate whiners to go scratch.
“Before the “loss and damage” talks proceed we should ask……”
We should ask
WHAT LOSS?
WHAT DAMAGE?
And they have to prove it was from human caused CO2 climate change.
——
The answers are, of course….. ZERO, and ZERO
If you want to get down down on the ground
do it Colombia style
global warming baby.
Some rough figures:
Columbia population – 51m
Average income – $1000 per month
$800 bn pa divided by 51m – $1,300 per month.
Of course, the average worker will never see any of this money…
“According to the CHN article, the Interamerican Development Band is sponsoring similar “loss and damage” analyses by Panama and Peru. We should at least wait until these numbers come out before entering into any negotiations. After all, if their numbers are like Colombia’s then there is nothing to negotiate.”
Paralysis by analysis anyone? 😉
“Colombia’s increasing wildfires caused by institutional cattle ranching and land-grabbing”
https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/colombias-increasing-wildfires-caused-by-institutional-cattle-ranching-and-land-grabbing/
So not climate change then. 😉
There’s nothing to negotiate whether the numbers are small or large because there is no evidence CO2 is causing anyone any harm.
The negotiation should be: There is no evidence CO2 is harmful, so we are not paying you anything. End of negotiation.
We all worked for our wealth going back generations. I walked to school with holes in my shoes. These people want it all for free . .
Sheer luxury. I had to walk to school with newspaper wrapped around my feet.
Weelll….we had it rough….
Makes you wonder, what they would spend the money on doesn’t it?
With a population of around 50 million it would give everyone $16,000/yr. assuming their claim for reparations are an ongoing ask.
We can safely assume the domestic farming industry and every other work based activity would cease, why work when you can go to the beach and chill every day.
This assumes every one gets equal dibs of the free rich pickings available, of course.
The alternative scenario might be, a few at the top of the handout pile take it all and buy a John Kerry private jet to get around in the new Green utopia. Perhaps they would like an apartment in Monaco, maybe a nice stately house in the UK, or a ranch in Virginia. A yacht maybe? The example set by the seniors in the Green would be compelling, as they try to follow the lead of the UN and the Green envoy Kerry’s habits in particular.
We can all see where this free money is likely to go I think.?
That seems to be rather a lot of money, can we see the calculations of damage please? Colombia has a cheek, what about the cost to the West of their drug exports?
David, you missed this gem from the same quoted news report;
Fossil fuel delegation – 636 oil and gas lobbyists have been registered to attend Cop27, analysis of the provisional list of attendees by NGOs shows. That’s 100 more than attended at Cop26 last year. If they were to form of delegation, it would be larger than any African one
This means that many many national delegations are larger than 636 people or else why restrict it to the poorest continent on earth?
just what is the size of natonal delegations?
When people think free money is about, they show up in droves.
The Scottish government has pledged to give 5 million pounds to developing countries for “loss and damage” caused by global warming. This promise did not appear in the SNP’s manifesto for the last election. Unfortunately, the SNP has formed a coalition with the Scottish Greens who can only be described as utterly bonkers. The Scottish Greens are now effectively running the Scottish government even though they have little support in Scotland.
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/11/scotland-pledges-5m-for-climate-change-loss-and-damages/
eejit’s!
And here I thought the Scottish were smart. Seems like the infection of mass lunacy has not encountered an immune population in the “west.”
“There is not that much money in the whole world.”
Well, print some more then.
Perhaps the Columbians have just factored in the inflation that will result from all the money that will have to be created. When a loaf of bread costs a million $, $800 Billion doesn’t seem like so much. But it might be better for the UN to just create its own crypto currency, set the value of their tokens at say $100 million each and allocate them to needy developing countries. Maybe they could hire Sam Bankman-Fried to run the
scamoperation.At the end of 2016, just under a year after the Paris Agreement touted the “Green Climate Fund” objective of $100 billion per year from 2020 (or $1 trillion for the entire 2020s decade), India submitted the first version of their NDC.
It included :
2016 to 2030 = 15 years, $2500 billion / 15 years ~= $167 billion per year.
In 2016 India’s estimate of its “climate finance needs” was that their “fair share” of the “pot” being proposed at that time was … [ drumroll please ] … 167%.
The recent upgrade in demands to $2 trillion (per year) is 20 times larger than the GCF’s “paltry” $100 billion (per year).
20 x 167 billion is “only” 3.333 trillion USD … per year …
For some obscure reason, when trillions of dollars are dangled before governments, e.g. Columbia’s, their “fair share” estimates tend to be over-inflated.
800 / 2000 = 40% of the total proposed “pot” … for just one medium-sized country …
They were hoping for $1 billion
Asked for $800 billion hoping they’d get $1 billion to go away and shut up.
The U.N. has become corrupt. This is yet another tiresome, kleptocratic shakedown by countries that have BENEFITED from industrialization — not been hurt by it. During the last century, deaths and death rates from natural disasters have gone DOWN, not up — thanks to steel reinforced concrete, improved telecommunications, transportation, and so on.
Kleptocrats are promoting the math-free notion that advanced countries owe less developed countries MORE THAN ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD. This won’t end well, but it will end. Moral panics, doomsday fads, etc. do end eventually. Like an unstaked tomato plant, they topple under their own weight.
Wikipedia and the New York Times said “regional climate change associated with global warming had caused Colombian coffee production to decline from 12 million 132-pound bags, the standard measure, to 9 million bags between 2006 – 2010…”
Wikipedia goes on to say “…yields of Colombia coffee increased significantly from 2011 to 2018 to 14.2 million bags.”
Overall annual production runs about 11.5 million bags and represents about 15% of Columbia’s GDP. Production is estimated to be about 13 million bags in 2023 and 2024. What on earth could possibly have caused these increases and fluctuations? Weather variations? Global un-warming? More CO2 in the air?
Could it be that fluctuations in Columbia’s production of coffee and perhaps everything else have nothing whatever to do with “climate change?”
For reparations, just print and send them Confederate money.
For that matter, print and send them “Their Own Money”
Climate change must be damaging coca and marijuana production.
Perhaps it was really Cambodia.
It is just plain opportunism from Columbia and all those other countries claiming the same argument that because we in the west have worked hard and built our economies that we should somehow compensate these developing nations. Rubbish. Let them make their way.
Since this whole problem is based on fire, I think that the country/region that lit the first fire should be held accountable.
My tomatoes froze.
I require some cash to buy more
A couple mil should suffice as I don’t want to be ridonculous.
“One would expect the big green media like the Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, CNN and the Guardian to be all over this story.”
Nope. The story is a nonsense. The alleged government report was not quoted, but someone has clearly made an elementary error of arithmetic. The story quotes the cost as 4 trillion Colombian pesos. 1 peso is worth 0.0002 USD. The cost translates to $800 million.
More nitpick Nick. $800B is just too juicy to be passed up as a topic. Get over this dreary fact checking….
No one admits that you were right and that they effed up big time. They just quit commenting and slink off….