The executive branch’s recently released Volume II of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) is a massive document that is being cited as yet further evidence that the US government should act quickly and boldly in the fight against climate change. The coverage in The New YorkTimes was typical: “All told, the report says, climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100, more than double the losses of the Great Recession a decade ago.”
Yet this claim is extremely misleading, as I’ll demonstrate in this post. The projection of a 10 percent hit to GDP is an extremely unlikely (less than a 5 percent chance) event even if we assume we are in the most pessimistic of emission scenarios , while the scenario itself rests upon an assumption that progress on renewables and other technologies occurs much more slowly over the next century than it has already occurred historically. This means that anybody citing the NCA projections isn’t allowed to also tout imminent breakthroughs in wind and solar because such optimism renders the NCA projections invalid.
Even more astonishing, the NCA gives projections of the “cost of inaction” on climate change but does not give any estimate of the costs of action on climate change. (It’s a bit like a mechanic warning that you need a new part to avoid engine failure down the road but refusing to tell you how much the part will cost.) Yet if we follow the citations to other work (such as from the United Nations) the NCA cites, we see that even using the NCA’s own diagram , it is not clear that aggressive steps to fight climate change would be worth the cost.
The NCA Warns of a Potential 10 Percent Hit to US GDP1
The NCA is massive. In the interest of giving the reader a digestible chunk of analysis, in this post I am restricting myself to the material in Chapter 29, which covers the topic of “mitigation” and considers the economic impacts of climate change on the US. This chapter contains the chart that led New York Times reporters to write, “climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100.”
For a full recounting of my analysis, here is my post. For our purposes, the most important takeaway is this: According to the very literature that the NCA refers us to, the cost of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100 could be anywhere from 2.9 to 11.4 percent of consumption, with a best-guess of 4.8 percent.
The term “climate change” is one of those propaganda terms beloved of the Globalists. Climate change, the way it is now used, is a fundamentally a lie. Remember, these folks used to talk endlessly of “global warming”. That, at least, was honest enough to say what these comped climate scientists were actually predicting. Although they should have always added that it was man made. Scientifically, “climate change” is almost meaningless because climates are always changing on scales from the daily weather, to glacial epochs with periodic ice ages, to great long lived changes tied to plate techtonics. Climate change the slogan cannot be disproved because it makes no predictions other than the oxymoronic one that climates change.
The urgency, hysteria of Climate Change is a clear symptom of its fakeness. Climate Change doctrine is a psychological propaganda and warfare tool being used against western civilization. It was designed by the UN in cahoots with “scientists” who subscribe to socialist ideals.
How to tell if it is worth the paper it is written on…
Does it discuss the variation in output from the Sun, or the period of oscillation thereof?
Does it discuss the variation in the distance between the Earth and the surface of the Sun? …or any changes in that metric?
Does it even mention the possibility of dust clouds passing through our solar system?
Regardless do they ever discuss the cost of all their nifty solutions to the economy??
Do they ever discuss the reality that we produce less greenhouse gasses today than 20 years ago?
Why is it they never address the root cause, population? We have topped 7 billion people and headed to 8 billion. More people more pollution a fact ignored. They never talk about reducing world population.
However I recently read somebody recommending eating less beef on the basis that it would cut down the methane production.
The current guesstimate for population growth is 11 billion. The extra coming from Africa and thereafter a plateau as education and improved job prospects naturally limits population growth.
You bet. Expecting population growth to slow all by itself is nothing but a dream as is eating less beef is the same as putting a bandaid on an arterial wound.
Already happening in China. They have created their own demographic problem.
In order to reduce the deaths by starvation the Chinese introduced the one-child policy. As a result their numbers plateau’d, began to reduce, and only about 50~100 million actually died. However they now have the German or Japanese problem, an ageing population with a fewer number of young people in the succeeding generations.
I cannot argue with that, so maybe we need to go back a couple of decades.
Another thing is that since Chairman Mao died the trade situation has eased a lot and China has no shortage of American Treasuries with which to buy food. Pork and Soy beans spring to mind.
My son has worked in China for a decade, he told me about the recent relaxation of the one-child stricture.
A guy I worked with back in the noughties had emigrated from China, he told me about the people who had starved, that the official government figure was 30-million and that nobody was allowed to talk about it for two reasons; a) the fact that any had died was embarrassing, and b) the real number was significantly higher.
The starvation was the instigator for the one-child stricture.
The manifestation of 2 or less children per family is what caused Merkel to beckon the immigrants. What would you do to migrant families with more than 2 children?
What about the illegitimate children, the ones that are simply unplanned or the result of infidelity or drunken opportunism.
However … the worst of it is that it is a waste of money; a job creation scheme with a social burden championed by has-been politicians and funding seekers.
I’m not going to concern myself with those that are irresponsible. If they have more than two children for whatever the reason they will be taxed. For God’s sake learn to control yourself.
If immigrant families were here legally they would pay the same taxes. Now that brings up another issue and that’s illegal immigrants raising families here. I say round them up and kick their thieving asses out.
The other part of the cost of any ‘green new deal’ is that we’ll be the only ones doing it. China is taking steps to reduce pollution India and the rest of the third world - are not. The world’s population of doers is declining, the population of third world backwaters is expanding. Our efforts have to be serious, but there is no benefit to them being ruinous.