Hidden Costs of Climate Change Running Hundreds of Billions a Year (?)

The claims made below are more moderate than what we read from most media commentators.  They say that the earth is about one degree Celsius warmer than it was 150 years or so ago and that may be true.

Missing from their story is any proof that hunan activity is to blame for the warming and missing also is any assurance that the warming will continue to rise.  Since we are at the end of a warm interglacial, it could fall.  Temperatures are generally LOWER in 2017 than they were in 2016.


Image from NASA/GISS

The connection to human activity is, in other words, pure theory, and poor theory at at that -- considering the lack of synchrony between CO2 rise and temperature rise


Extreme weather, made worse by climate change, along with the health impacts of burning fossil fuels, has cost the U.S. economy at least $240 billion a year over the past ten years, a new report has found.

And yet this does not include this past months’ three major hurricanes or 76 wildfires in nine Western states. Those economic losses alone are estimated to top $300 billion, the report notes. Putting it in perspective, $300 billion is enough money to provide free tuition for the 13.5 million U.S. students enrolled in public colleges and universities for four years.

In the coming decade, economic losses from extreme weather combined with the health costs of air pollution spiral upward to at least $360 billion annually, potentially crippling U.S. economic growth, according to this new report, The Economic Case for Climate Action in the United States, published online Thursday by the Universal Ecological Fund.

“Burning fossil fuels comes at a giant price tag which the U.S. economy cannot afford and not sustain," said Sir Robert Watson, coauthor and director at the U.K's Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research.

“We want to paint a picture for Americans to illustrate the fact that the costs of not acting on climate change are very significant,” Watson, the former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told National Geographic.

Watson is quick to point out that extreme weather events, including heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts, are not caused by climate change. However, there is no question their intensity and frequency in many cases has been made worse by the fact the entire planet is now 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C) hotter, he said in an interview.

While a 1.8 degree F (1 degree C) increase may seem small it’s having a major economic impact on the U.S. According to data provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the number of extreme weather events causing at least $1 billion in economic losses has increased more than 400 percent since the 1980s. Some of that increase is due to increased amounts of housing and commercial infrastructure along coastlines. “However that doesn’t account for big increases in the last decade,” Watson said.

And much more global warming is coming—3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) temperature by 2050 and even greater warming beyond that—unless bigger cuts in fossil-fuel emissions are made than those promised in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, said Watson. “The impacts of climate change are certainly going to get more than twice as bad,” he said.

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Zeke to the rescue,/b>

Zeke Hausfather below kicks back at the recent finding that Warmist models overstate the actual degree of global warming observed in recent decades.  He in essence attacks the existing Warmist models and constructs a new model of his own that gives a result closer to reality.  So he is actually an enemy of the IPCC models too!  Refreshing!

His reasoning for his new model seems sound so perhaps we can look forward to more modest models from Warmists generally.

Sadly, however, Zeke's model still seems to be too warm.  Judith Curry has the details.


A new study published in the Nature Geosciences journal this week by largely UK-based climate scientists has led to claims in the media that climate models are “wrong” and have significantly overestimated the observed warming of the planet.

Here Carbon Brief shows why such claims are a misrepresentation of the paper’s main results. In reality, the results obtained from the type of model-observation comparisons performed in the paper depend greatly on the dataset and model outputs used by the authors.

Much of the media coverage surrounding the paper, Millar et al, has focused on the idea that climate models are overestimating observed temperatures by around 0.3C, or nearly 33% of the observed warming since the late 1800s. For example, the Daily Mail reported:

According to these models, temperatures across the world should now be at least 1.3 degrees above the mid-19th century average, which is taken as a base level in such calculations. But the British report demonstrates that the rise is only between 0.9 and 1 degree.

Lead author Dr Richard Millar and his co-authors have pushed back against such media coverage, releasing a statement which says:

A number of media reports have asserted that our [study] indicates that global temperatures are not rising as fast as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and hence that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is no longer urgent. Both assertions are false. Our results are entirely in line with the IPCC’s 2013 prediction that temperatures in the 2020s would be 0.9-1.3 degrees above pre-industrial [levels].

[Carbon Brief’s guest post by Dr Millar earlier this week includes the paper’s key figures. Additionally, one of his co-authors, Prof Piers Forster, provides further reaction at the end of this article.]

Contrary to media claims, the study found that warming is consistent with the range of IPCC models, albeit a bit lower than the average of all the models.

Indeed, as Carbon Brief explains in detail below, the difference between models and observations turns out to depend largely on what climate model outputs and observational temperature series are used. The 0.3C value is based on a misinterpretation of the paper by the media and was not intended by the authors as an estimate of current model/observation temperature differences.

Other temperature datasets not used by the authors, such as those from NASA and Berkeley Earth, show much smaller model/observation differences than the one used in the paper, and these model/observation difference in turn disappear when model outputs more comparable to how temperature data is actually collected are incorporated, though differences in the implied future carbon budget would still remain.

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Global carbon emissions stood still in 2016, offering climate hope

To use an old Australian expression:  "How'd ya be; How'd ya be? How would you bloody well be"?  I never expected the Guardian to publish something as deflationary as the article below.  

I pointed early on that atmospheric CO2 levels did not rise in 2016 and that was subsequently confirmed by others.  What the Guardian reports below may partly explain that.  Human emissions of CO2 in 2015/2016 plateaued.  That is another nail in the coffin for the dishonest Warmist claims that the 2016 temperature rise was due to Anthropogenic global warming.  It was of course due to El Nino.

The logic of the finding -- logic which the Guardian avoids -- is that the panic is over.  CO2 levels ain't gonna rise no more.  So there's nothing to worry about now.  Global warming has stopped.


Global emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide remained static in 2016, a welcome sign that the world is making at least some progress in the battle against global warming by halting the long-term rising trend.

All of the world’s biggest emitting nations, except India, saw falling or static carbon emissions due to less coal burning and increasing renewable energy, according to data published on Thursday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (NEAA). However other mainly developing nations, including Indonesia, still have rising rates of CO2 emissions.

Stalled global emissions still means huge amounts of CO2 are being added to the atmosphere every year – more than 35bn tonnes in 2016 – driving up global temperatures and increasing the risk of damaging, extreme weather. Furthermore, other heat-trapping greenhouse gases, mainly methane from cattle and leaks from oil and gas exploration, are still rising and went up by 1% in 2016.

“These results are a welcome indication that we are nearing the peak in global annual emissions of greenhouse gases,” said climate economist Prof Lord Nicholas Stern at the London School of Economics and president of the British Academy.

“To realise the goals of the Paris agreement and hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2C, we must reach peak emissions as soon as possible and then achieve a rapid decline soon afterwards,” Stern said. “These results from the Dutch government show that there is a real opportunity to get on track.”

Jos Olivier, the chief researcher for the NEAA report, sounded a note of caution: “There is no guarantee that CO2 emissions will from now on be flat or descending.” He said, for example, a rise in gas prices could see more coal burning resume in the US.

The flat CO2 emissions in 2016 follow similar near-standstills in 2014 and 2015. This lack of growth is unprecedented in a time when the global economy is growing. As the number of years of flat emissions grows, scientists are more confident a peak has been reached, rather than a temporary halt. In July 2016, senior economists said China’s huge coal burning had peaked, marking a historic turning point in efforts to tame climate change.

SOURCE




Jerry Brown Wants to Impose ‘China-Style’ Ban on Combustion Engine Cars

California’s Governor Jerry Brown visited China recently and came home with a radical new idea: banning the internal combustion engine in automobiles sold in what is already the greenest state in the nation.

Bloomberg News reports:

Governor Jerry Brown has expressed an interest in barring the sale of vehicles powered by internal-combustion engines, Mary Nichols, chairman of the California Air Resources Board, said in an interview Friday at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. The earliest such a ban is at least a decade away, she said.

Brown, one of the most outspoken elected official in the U.S. about the need for policies to combat climate change, would be replicating similar moves by China, France and the U.K.

“I’ve gotten messages from the governor asking, ‘Why haven’t we done something already?’” Nichols said, referring to China’s planned phase-out of fossil-fuel vehicle sales. “The governor has certainly indicated an interest in why China can do this and not California.”

…

“To reach the ambitious levels of reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, we have to pretty much replace all combustion with some form of renewable energy by 2040 or 2050,” Nichols said. “We’re looking at that as a method of moving this discussion forward.”

Instituting such a policy in California would affect the entire car industry globally, due to the massive size of California’s car market. Over 2 million new passenger vehicles were sold and registered in the nation’s most populous state last year — more than than the entire nations of Spain, France and Italy.

California has had the right to write its own pollution rules since the 1970’s under waivers granted by the EPA. But it’s unlikely the Trump administration would approve such a plan, forcing California to take a different legal route.

According to Motor Trend magazine, Nichols says California is considering regulating the types of cars that can be registered in the state or have access to highways.

“We certainly wouldn’t expect to get a waiver for that from the EPA,” she told Bloomberg. “I think we would be looking at using some of our other authorities to get that result.”

China plans to end sales of combustion engine vehicles in 2030. Other countries like France and the U.K. plan to follow suit a decade later.

California has not yet specified a date to copy China’s policy.

SOURCE




One in five Australians believe global warming is a hoax

Essential Research has surveyed about 1000 Australians on various beliefs to reveal some eyebrow-raising results.

It found 21 per cent believed global warming was a hoax perpetrated by scientists - with 9 per cent strongly believing in the statement and 12 per cent somewhat believing. Another 11 per cent were not sure.

One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts has been among those to doubt climate change science, with a senior NASA official last year rejecting his claims the agency had falsified data to exaggerate warming in the Arctic.

And in June, after being asked by Senator Roberts whether it was important for scientists to keep an open mind, chief scientist Alan Finkel agreed: "But not so open that your brain leaks out."

Griffith University Climate Change Response Program director Brendan Mackey said climate change was an established scientific fact backed up by hard data.

"We have a really solid scientific basis for knowing and understanding the way the climate is changing rapidly," Professor Mackey said. [Like what?]

"I find it interesting as a scientist when people say they don't believe in science because science is not a matter of faith - religion is a matter of faith.

"It's really a matter of having a scientific understanding or explanation in relation to the cause and effect."

Professor Mackey said many people had never been taught about climate change science so found it difficult to understand.

And he said it was not something you could look out the window and see or experience, such as using an iPhone.

"The technology [for smartphones] comes from scientific understanding about quantum mechanics," he said.

"There's hardly anyone who understands about quantum mechanics but the iPhone works and they're happy their phone works and they're not worried about the reason why.

"People don't say 'I don't believe in gravity' because they can feel the effect of it.

"Climate change is a more abstract concept so part of it is people don't have that direct personal experience of climate change."

SOURCE

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