Essay by Eric Worrall
”… While I am not an economist, in my opinion the data seems flawed. …”
New Study: Climate Change Could Reduce The World Economy 19% By 2049
Jon McGowan
ContributorI am an attorney who writes about ESG policy, laws, and regulations.
A new study claims that loss of productivity because of climate change could result in a 19% reduction in the world economy by 2049. Despite the number being significantly higher than previous studies, the authors claim their numbers are conservative and could be as high 29% of the global GDP. Climate activists were quick to latch onto the study, calling for more aggressive measures to prevent climate change and fund mitigation efforts.
The study, The economic commitment of climate change, was published in Nature on April 17 by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, also known as PIK, a non-profit organization funded by the German government.
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While I am not an economist, in my opinion the data seems flawed. According to a study published by NOAA in January 2024, the average temperature has risen 2° F since 1850. In that same period, the global GDP increased from $1.73 trillion to $134.08 trillion. If we accept the climate projection models used in the study, it dismisses the resiliency of human nature and our ability to overcome economic challenges.
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Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmcgowan/2024/04/29/new-study-climate-change-could-reduce-the-world-economy-19-by-2049/?sh=7c99ce5440b8
The abstract of the study;
The economic commitment of climate change
Abstract
Global projections of macroeconomic climate-change damages typically consider impacts from average annual and national temperatures over long time horizons1,2,3,4,5,6. Here we use recent empirical findings from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years to project sub-national damages from temperature and precipitation, including daily variability and extremes7,8. Using an empirical approach that provides a robust lower bound on the persistence of impacts on economic growth, we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (relative to a baseline without climate impacts, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate and empirical uncertainty). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2 °C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter diverge strongly dependent on emission choices. Committed damages arise predominantly through changes in average temperature, but accounting for further climatic components raises estimates by approximately 50% and leads to stronger regional heterogeneity. Committed losses are projected for all regions except those at very high latitudes, at which reductions in temperature variability bring benefits. The largest losses are committed at lower latitudes in regions with lower cumulative historical emissions and lower present-day income.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07219-0
Spot on Jon McGowan – it’s near impossible to produce a scary projection without making some pretty questionable assumptions. From the study above;
… Following a well-developed literature2,3,19, these projections do not aim to provide a prediction of future economic growth. Instead, they are a projection of the exogenous impact of future climate conditions on the economy relative to the baselines specified by socio-economic projections, based on the plausibly causal relationships inferred by the empirical models and assuming ceteris paribus. Other exogenous factors relevant for the prediction of economic output are purposefully assumed constant. …
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07219-0
Holding as many variables as possible static, while changing only those variables you want to study, is a time honoured method of analysing complex systems.
But as the authors admit, their study is not realistic. My understanding of the study is they are attempting to abstract the impact say more extreme weather would have on the economy, if nobody attempted to mitigate these problems, say by building better drainage and water management systems to manage floods, and bigger reservoirs to maintain agricultural output during severe droughts.
As Forbes author Jon McGowan rightly points out, there are good reasons to doubt the real world applicability of the predictions of the study, even if we pretend their admittedly unrealistic assumptions are realistic.
Why would the next 0.5C of warming be so much worse than the previous 0.5C of warming?
There is no historical evidence which suggests the next 0.5C of warming, if it occurs, would be any worse than what we have already experienced. There is no evidence extreme weather is getting worse, despite the predictions of climate models which were used as the basis of the study quoted above.
In fact there are good reasons to believe additional warming might produce a better climate for humans.
Global warming is not evenly distributed across the world. Polar amplification is the observed strong tendency for global warming to be pushed away from the equator to where it is actually needed.
If global warming continues, by 2049 there is a very good chance there will be more viable agricultural land available for our use, not less. Canadian Geographic admitted in 2020 that global warming is opening millions of square kilometres of new agricultural land, and will continue to do so if the world continues to warm.
I’m personally pleased Jon McGowan and Forbes published this rare criticism of alarmist global warming tropes. Let’s hope more news outlets and authors find the courage in future to question the steady stream of increasingly exaggerated and implausible claims of how doomed we all are.
It seems there is a greater probability that climate mitigation strategies will impact the world economy negatively as energy density decreases and resources become more scarce and costly.
The best mitigation strategy is to kill off net zero policies. Wokeachusetts is moving into totalitarianism with its net zero policy. That will be called a conspiracy theory- but it’s true. Right now, the hot climate topic (no pun intended) here is how to zone towns for industrial battery systems that will destroy landscapes, be of no value, cost a fortune, be a fire hazard- and I just learned today that they need a great deal of air conditioning. That irony is inescapable to everyone with a brain, not including therefore, climate whack jobs, state officials and those who want to enrich themselves with this scam.
Sometime in the past, maybe the distant past, someone here at WUWT published a list of all the things people had written about which were expected to be worse with global warming, which is what the term “climate change” tries to disguise. The list was huge and became in the final analysis a laughable farce because every ninny activist or academic with a razor-thin view of a particular topic was worried it would become the end of times.
Now there are just a couple of observations that counter these millions of pages of doom. The Earth is becoming greener and slightly warmer especially at night and at high latitudes, which not only portents 1) a larger supply of natural materials, but 2) more livable habitat for people and wildlife.
The only thing about climate change that concerns me is certain people lousing it up.
The list can be summarised thus:
Everything
Number Watch. http://numberwatch.co.uk (now defunct) maintained a set of links to a host of stories along the line: Climate Change causes more pimples or fewer pimples.
Here is a link from the Wayback Machine…
https://web.archive.org/web/20220701173425/http://numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Here is a sample,
Atlantic less salty, Atlantic more salty, atmospheric circulation modified, attack of the killer jellyfish, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased, Baghdad snow, Bahrain under water, bananas grow, barbarisation, bats decline, beer and bread prices to soar, beer better, beer worse, beetle infestation, beef shortage, bet for $10,000, big melt faster, billion dollar research projects, billion homeless, billions face risk, billions of deaths, bird loss accelerating, bird populations dying, bird strikes, bird visitors drop, birds confused, birds decline (Wales), birds driven north, birds face longer migrations, birds on long migrations threatened, birds return early, birds shrink(Aus), birds shrink (USA), bittern boom ends, blackbirds stop singing, blackbirds threatened, Black Hawk down, blizzards, blood contaminated, blue mussels return, borders redrawn, bluetongue, brains shrink, brewers droop, bridge collapse (Minneapolis), Britain one big city, Britain Siberian, Britain’s bananas, British monsoon, brothels struggle, brown Ireland, bubonic plague, Buddhist temple threatened, building collapse, building season extension, bushfires, butterflies move north, butterflies reeling, butterfly saved,
“Climate activists were quick to latch onto the study, calling for more aggressive measures to prevent climate change and fund mitigation efforts.”
I’m sure that would guarantee 29% plus.
If “climate change” is going to adversely impact the world’s economy it’s only because of the ignorant, activist political devotion the things like the US “green new deal.” Between terrible regulations and government debt to fund useless activist efforts to eliminate fossil fuels and reduce CO2 (which hasn’t been working at all), our economic activity will be significantly reduced. But then what do I know? I’m only an old EE with 33y in the electric power industry and some experience with money.
PIK at work as usual. I wonder, does German government really need these nonsenses?
PIK is infamous for climate alarmism. Its former director, Schellnhuber, is the one who got Pope Francis wound up about climate. Any numerical harm estimate from PIK is certain to be badly biased.
There is no harm to be found when:
And when previous alarms are proven scientifically false:
A slight natural warming from now would be mostly in the evening and night-time, and mostly in the colder regions of the world.
This would open up large areas of land that are now too cold for production purposes.
This would massively INCREASE the global well-being.
Perhaps they are forecasting a COOLING period, which could cause a lot of trouble in many cooler regions, especially those countries that have wilfully destroyed their energy and electricity supply systems.
The doom machine keeps repeating …… feed me, feed me. But eventually everyone figures out it was Chicken Little all along. When will we hit ‘eventually’?
When will we hit ‘eventually’?
________________________________________________________________
You need a model for that.
(/sarc)
I’ve got a plasticine model of ‘eventually’ that you can hit ;
Send $97 for plans.
Eric says “Jon McGowan and Forbes published this rare criticism of alarmist global warming tropes.”.
You mleskovar, hit the nail on the head. The Chicken Little meme is so repetitive and boring, seemingly running frantically towards doom, while actual climate is pleasantly marking time. It’s as if a sportscaster for the Super Bowl playoffs is standing in for live play by play at a lawn bowling tourney and feels he has to make it exciting.
The media, having year year after year, for 40 yrs covered this silly stuff and realize that nothing Interesting is going to happen. We are going to be treated to a big turn-off of the media on climate doom and see them argue against this pathetic lot.
Net Zero is known to be scientificant NONSENSE. Only India and China’s emissions are important – even if the CO2 issues were right right (which now it clearly isn’t) Why is the world being forced into penury for non-science?
Some will not be in penury, they’ll be filthy rich by milking this scam.
As soon as see an attribution to Potsdam in any forecast I stop reading.
Climatism ideologues in steroids.
You can add Imperial College to that
Not idealogues but fantastists, no basis at all in reality.
Don’t think it is steroids they are taking..
Some new mind-bending hallucinogenic, perhaps ?
Climate change can and does anything you can imagine
Very powerful- the new Satan!
Except it only does it in people’s imagination.
Which I suppose is what satan is, too.
Isn’t it amazing how people “studying” can now predict the future? It used to take a clairvoyant with a crystal ball in a tent with candles to do that.
The author used that magically potent word, “could”.
They studied their belly buttons for quite a while and came up with excellent numbers. When did science change from performing experiments to understand and document reality to running models to get projections?
The clue is in the name. PIK, climalarmists par excellence.
And written by a guy called Kotz? ‘Das ist zum kotzen’, as they say in Germany.
The Grand Solar Minimum that started in 2020 is forecast to drop global temperature by 1C over the next 30 years. The last time this occurred was about 400 years ago during the Little Ice Age when millions died from famine.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23328940.2020.1796243
Climate ChangeNet Zero Policies Will Reduce The World Economy 19% By 2049fixed it
(I’ll turn 100 years old that year- luckily we’ll defeat those policies and the economy will double!)
If you want to stifle economic development.. Go green and go woke.
It is the climate change agenda that is and will continue to cause economic downturn in many western countries.
The utter waste of money to solve a totally “pretend” problem.
The downgrading of reliable cheap electricity supplies.
The stopping of progress and development on purely imaginary grounds.
I think that we all know that the net zero dogma will reduce GDP much more than any imaginary crisis.
We need lots more influential people and publications to take the lead on the pushback, show some backbone and call out the cult!
“Following a well-developed literature2,3,19, these projections do not aim to provide a prediction of future economic growth”
Then what is the point?
Story tip.
And right on cue for another climate doomsday fairy-tale, here’s the Guardian Australia with a sob-sob story (actually more a groan-groan story) about coral bleaching on (a tiny part of) the Great Barrier Reef (Heron Island to be precise, which ain’t that well acquainted with the GBR proper).
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/may/01/great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching-crisis
Of course it’s Terry Hughes from James Cook University again, this time turning on the waterworks and getting all emotionally downbeat.
I think it’s time he hired Andrew Lloyd Webber to help him go full ‘miserable’ about the GBR corals.
(of course that would ignore that sage advice to “never go full
retardMiserables”)Surface coral viewed from above…?
… after an El Nino which probably lowered tide levels like in 2015/16.
Exposing surface coral to more direct sunlight.
Symbiotic residents will return in a year or so.
“Global warming turned me into a newt!”
(“but I got better . . .” 🙁 )
h/t Monty Python’s Search For The Holy Grail.
James Cook University is experiencing a rough ride these days, a reputation as the university which sued a professor to punish academic freedom is not enhancing their reputation as a good place to work and study.
Students launch class action against James Cook after discovering courses aren’t accredited.
Court finds James Cook misled students.
#415 world ranking
etc.
” findings from more than 1,600 regions”
If any of this was true, 1 would have been sufficient.
The key word here is “could” which can also mean “might” or “might not”. For at least the past half-century we’ve been hearing what could happen if we don’t do this or keep doing that regarding climate and environments, but when we look at the growth of population, life expectancy, agricultural output, food production and the decrease of infant mortality and poverty levels, we realize that the human race is far more resilient and resourceful than the doomsday peddlers “could” ever imagine.
Any economic “doomsday” on the horizon will be due to the “solutions”, not climate change.
When it comes to global economics, a lot now depends on China’s access to low cost coal.
Both Australia and UK have given up on manufacturing. The most populous states in the USA have given up on manufacturing. Europe still has some manufacturing but it is in rapid decline. That means a lot rests on China to make the stuff that the rest of the world wants. Making stuff depends on coal availability.
Everybody here can see through the BS. It is heartening to see it seeping through the msm. I see a graph with 2 lines that follow and corrolate: economic downturn and interest in more climate measures. There might be some money for mitigation.
Yes, there is at last hope, with a gradual increase in quesioning of the dogma by the MSM.
Unfortunately Forbes led with the dramatic headline, and that is all many people read:
There is no escaping the dooming as the Supercomputer has spoken-
First-ever supercomputer simulation predicts when climate change will kill us off (msn.com)
Eschew panic and stiff upper lip for the sake of the kiddies and may your God walk with you when the dooming is upon you.
From the paper, this tells you everything you need to know:
My B.S. alarm went off reading the first sentence of that tripe. l quit reading.
Do you still have to pay for electricity and gasoline?
Not us, we invested in a solar system and electric cars and have lived and driven with free electricity for eight years now.
The PV solar system paid back in three years in gasoline savings alone.
Why don’t I see anything about the extreme temperatures of surface waters and deep ocean currents?
How about Ocean Acidification?
This site is a basket of cherry-picked up technical information proving nothing.
Are there any Climate Deniers here?
Really?