Is the U.S. Government Underestimating the Cost of Climate Change?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

All those insults and changes resulting from climate disruption add up quickly: $15 billion for Midwest farmers staring at a year of crop loss and rebuilding as the Mississippi River floods; 600 deaths and 1,000 hospitalizations as a heat wave bakes Chicago; and $147 million gone as Alaska's king crab fishery succumbs to acidification and changing prey/predator structures.

The list touches virtually every human endeavor - forestry, health, tourism, energy production, city planning, agriculture, commerce, even culture.

The total cost of climate change seems impossible to pin down, given the uncertainties. But an assortment of climate researchers and economists are now chasing after that sum, attempting to arrive at a bottom line.

In February an inter-agency workgroup released the administration's best guess of what each ton of carbon dioxide dumped in the atmosphere costs society: $21, plus or minus, or roughly $121 billion worth of damages annually as a result of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

Until this summer, the exercise was mostly academic. No more. The death of cap-and-trade and the shift in Congress following the mid-term elections means that bottom line has the potential to shape U.S. climate policy for the foreseeable future.

As federal agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency take the lead to limit emissions, their proposals must balance the cost of new restrictions against benefit of avoiding climate change impacts.

That's because the costs of averting global change are also steep: Trillions of dollars to rework energy infrastructure, change habits, upgrade housing stock and capture and sequester planet-warming emissions, just to start.

The lower the estimated cost of disruption - known as the "social cost of carbon" - the less action the Obama Administration can justify. And several economists and scientists fear that the Administration has low-balled the figure, handicapping its ability to curb emissions.

"It's like a volume dial on regulation," said Kristen Sheeran, executive director for the Economics for Equity and the Environment Network. "The higher the social cost of carbon, the more stringent those regulations can be."

"My fear is that they're going right back to the exact same models that have provided a lot of grist for the justification of inaction in the first place."

Those models provide the best information to date, said Richard Tol, a research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, who developed one of the three impact models used by the federal government.

More research will help narrow the range of uncertainty, he said, but the numbers the federal government has picked reflect established, peer-reviewed science. "The number is not precise, but it's not a crazy number."

The $21 figure came from an inter-agency effort consisting of representatives from 12 federal agencies. It has become the default value for government benefit-cost analyses; efforts by individual agencies to assess the value of emissions reductions have largely ceased. In recent months the Department of Energy has cited that figure to assess the impact of new air conditioning efficiency standards, and the EPA cites it in the agency's analysis of greenhouse gas emissions from light trucks, among others.

But the figure is low, critics say - a danger that will become apparent as the administration tries to justify additional and more ambitious mitigation efforts. If capturing carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants - a technology that does not exist commercially today - ends up costing only $30 per ton of carbon dioxide yet the benefit of keeping each ton out of the atmosphere is worth just $21, carbon sequestration would fail the benefit-cost test.

"If $21 a ton actually drove policy, where would we end up? Well, we'd end up with a whole lot more warming," said a former EPA official who declined to be identified because of his continuing work with federal agencies on the effort. "$21 a ton doesn't really justify much."

The U.S. Global Change Research Program backs that up. To limit atmospheric carbon levels to 450 parts-per-million using the least-expensive technologies available, carbon dioxide emissions would need to be valued between $36 and $88 per ton, it concluded in a 2007 report. Current atmospheric carbon levels are near 385 ppm, about 35 percent higher than pre-industrial levels. Science is not clear what level poses a threat, but some research suggests higher risk of dire consequences if atmospheric carbon were to increase above the 450 ppm threshold.

more...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-the-us-government-underestimating

[Ban Hammer 13,395]

i've gotta keep better notes. global warming climate change climate disruption! there, now i'm up to date.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

i've gotta keep better notes. global warming climate change climate disruption! there, now i'm up to date.

You must go crazy confused over all the different guns and their names.

[SMOKE 1,426]

You must go crazy confused over all the different guns and their names.

the guns are real.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

the guns are real.

And science is fiction? Riiiiight. Yes, it's all a plot by nerdy scientists to make us all ride bicycles and say 'hello' to each other as we pass by.

[luckytxn 2,264]

And science is fiction? Riiiiight. Yes, it's all a plot by nerdy scientists to make us all ride bicycles and say 'hello' to each other as we pass by.

Fake science anyway. Lets try for a few years of instead of paying off scientists to toe the Fed line on paying them to come up with data that says otherwise and then we will see this so called facts and data show otherwise. This fake science is made up as governments have found a way to be able to control its citizenry and reap a huge bonanza of new funds to shift to their corporate pals and back into their own pockets.

When the Feds stop throwing so much money around to buy science and stop suppressing data that refutes them and falsifying data then maybe this can become a science. Right now it is a theory that has not been proven at all. The majority of scientists disagree with the theory.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Fake science anyway. Lets try for a few years of instead of paying off scientists to toe the Fed line on paying them to come up with data that says otherwise and then we will see this so called facts and data show otherwise. This fake science is made up as governments have found a way to be able to control its citizenry and reap a huge bonanza of new funds to shift to their corporate pals and back into their own pockets.

When the Feds stop throwing so much money around to buy science and stop suppressing data that refutes them and falsifying data then maybe this can become a science. Right now it is a theory that has not been proven at all. The majority of scientists disagree with the theory.

You think every climate scientist or for that matter, every body of science that studies climate in the world is on the Fed's payroll?

[luckytxn 2,264]

You think every climate scientist or for that matter, every body of science that studies climate in the world is on the Fed's payroll?

Yes or works for an institution that receives funding from the Feds. Know any at all that are totally free from funding and are independent?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Yes or works for an institution that receives funding from the Feds. Know any at all that are totally free from funding and are independent?

That's a bit of stretch, but assuming that you are right, whose agenda are they pushing for and why?

[luckytxn 2,264]

That's a bit of stretch, but assuming that you are right, whose agenda are they pushing for and why?

They will be pushing for the agenda that pays them. You do understand that climatologists are the only profession that gets degrees in doing predictions right? They don't toe the Fed line then they get no funding. This is hardly a way to get honest facts and data. It has come out in the last few years that data has been left out that showed anything to not help and even suppressed. Also it has been shown that any scientist that does not agree has been marginalized and attacked. I can google a lot of facts that show that there are way more scientists that disagree with the GW crowd but we have done that before here. The one thing that I have found is that any organization and scientist that spouts off about GW receives funding from the very source that has a huge stake in the results being to show that it is manmade. Hardly credible.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

They will be pushing for the agenda that pays them. You do understand that climatologists are the only profession that gets degrees in doing predictions right? They don't toe the Fed line then they get no funding. This is hardly a way to get honest facts and data.

To whose benefit does it serve by making false predictions about the effects of Climate Change?

It has come out in the last few years that data has been left out that showed anything to not help and even suppressed. Also it has been shown that any scientist that does not agree has been marginalized and attacked. I can google a lot of facts that show that there are way more scientists that disagree with the GW crowd but we have done that before here. The one thing that I have found is that any organization and scientist that spouts off about GW receives funding from the very source that has a huge stake in the results being to show that it is manmade. Hardly credible.

The bodies of science that study climate worldwide have come to the same conclusions that humans have accelerated Climate Change through the burning of fossil fuels. Whatever data can be thrown out or discarded doesn't change that conclusion. There are no bodies of science who say anything to the contrary and if you are thinking that funding for these bodies of science skewer the results, then how can you be sure that these contrarian scientists are not also giving you a tainted opinion? Who's paying their paychecks?

[luckytxn 2,264]

To whose benefit does it serve by making false predictions about the effects of Climate Change?

Like I said before. The ones paying the funding gets results skewered toward what they have paid for. If the results show anything else then the funding will be stopped. This means that they will try to do anything to keep the spigot open.

The bodies of science that study climate worldwide have come to the same conclusions that humans have accelerated Climate Change through the burning of fossil fuels. Whatever data can be thrown out or discarded doesn't change that conclusion. There are no bodies of science who say anything to the contrary and if you are thinking that funding for these bodies of science skewer the results, then how can you be sure that these contrarian scientists are not also giving you a tainted opinion? Who's paying their paychecks?

They all came to the same conclusions when the money started to flow their way when it was shown if they toe the line they will get money thrown their way. It is according what data thrown out if the results are skewered. When I used to send out round robin smaples to all my labs and got the results I would toss out the highest and lowest and average the rest. If I had thrown out only the results that came in I was displeased in then that would have skewered the whole batch. That would change the conclusions totally and also have been illegal and set me up for lawsuits. I can't be sure that contrarian scientists are right but the majority of scientists in the world are in doubt and that shows we need to listen. Now there are websites that show the contrarian scientists viewpoints and the why's. No one ever mentions them but the ones that do get funded by the ones that have a stake in the results and are in line with the Feds are the ones that get airplay.

This is a theory only and no way a real science. A real science never ever needs to suppress data and marginalize scientists and falsify data.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I can't be sure that contrarian scientists are right but the majority of scientists in the world are in doubt and that shows we need to listen. Now there are websites that show the contrarian scientists viewpoints and the why's. No one ever mentions them but the ones that do get funded by the ones that have a stake in the results and are in line with the Feds are the ones that get airplay.

How can that be if the majority of climate scientists belong to these bodies of science? And again, who is paying their paycheck? For example, if one of these scientists works for or is paid by Exxon/Mobil, is there not a conflict of interest?

This is a theory only and no way a real science. A real science never ever needs to suppress data and marginalize scientists and falsify data.

Science is built of theories. Gravity is a theory. And such theories only become theories when they can be repeated or recreated in the lab. There is no hocus-pocus behind the theory of Global Warming. It is a sound scientific theory that has been reproducible through climate models.

[luckytxn 2,264]

How can that be if the majority of climate scientists belong to these bodies of science? And again, who is paying their paycheck? For example, if one of these scientists works for or is paid by Exxon/Mobil, is there not a conflict of interest?

Science is built of theories. Gravity is a theory. And such theories only become theories when they can be repeated or recreated in the lab. There is no hocus-pocus behind the theory of Global Warming. It is a sound scientific theory that has been reproducible through climate models.

So you agree that it is a theory only so far? Good. I never said that this theory is built from hocus pocus even though it is predictions only based. When you say that anything is reproducible from climate models then all you are saying is that computers that are programmed by humans show that this theory may be worth checking into. Lets see the programs they use to show this. What data are they feeding into the computer. Are they only showing manmade stuff and what percentage is added from natural effects? This is computer generated and the computer will show only what data is fed it and even then it has to be programmed right. Anything can skewer the results this way. Now a computer generated result can be helpful but far from being a firm conclusion.

Yes a scientist being paid for by Exxon or any entity can and should be looked at as a possible conflict of interest but are you saying that them getting funded by the Feds should not?

[lostinblue 1,989]

How can that be if the majority of climate scientists belong to these bodies of science? And again, who is paying their paycheck? For example, if one of these scientists works for or is paid by Exxon/Mobil, is there not a conflict of interest?

Science is built of theories. Gravity is a theory. And such theories only become theories when they can be repeated or recreated in the lab. There is no hocus-pocus behind the theory of Global Warming. It is a sound scientific theory that has been reproducible through climate models.

Be wary of climate policy development

PAUL CHESSER

GUEST COLUMNIST

Imagine you are an advocacy group and want to sway a government's policy development, but really want to keep your activism a secret. You could learn a lot by observing and then avoiding the practices of the Center for Climate Strategies, a group of global warming worrywarts.

CCS in recent years has approached many states, including Washington, with an inexpensive, tantalizing offer: to establish and manage a process for climate change policy development. The results are a study legitimized by government that promotes onerous regulations, property rights infringement through smart growth initiatives, and new taxes and fees on fuels and utilities.

CCS operates in Washington in nearly the same way it's worked in every other state where it's been hired. First a governor (such as Gov. Chris Gregoire) issues an executive order declaring global warming a problem that must be confronted through state policy. Then a so-called stakeholder (political appointees and special interests, really) panel considers dozens of CCS-created policy options -- most of which impinge upon individual rights, increase energy costs, or add to the cost of government -- that ostensibly reduce CO2 emissions in the state. CCS holds the hand of the group through several meetings and its decision-making, until the threats to personal liberty and financial well-being are established as official government philosophy. Ideally (to CCS), legislatures will adopt them and add to everyone's cost of living. Nanny-staters celebrate.

But believe it or don't, CCS says it does not take a position on climate change solutions or push states into their greenhouse gas emissions decisions. Executive director Tom Peterson told me in an interview months ago, "(CCS) does not have an advocacy mission, and it doesn't have an advocacy history."

But CCS' concealment of its activism is like the fat kid standing behind a flagpole in a game of hide and seek.

Start with its funding. CCS comes to states promising to bring money with them to pay for their greenhouse-gas reduction development. Who foots the bill? Several foundations on the global warming panic train: the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The (Ted) Turner Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, the Energy Foundation, and many others. For example, the state of Washington is paying only $200,000 for CCS' services -- half of what their cheap process has cost in other states.

Then CCS controls the entire policy development: the agenda, scheduling and oversight of their meetings; the CO2 reduction options that stakeholders consider; analysis (which is not an examination of cost/benefit or climate impact) of those options; the voting process; the changing and/or elimination of options; and the writing of all meeting minutes, presentations and reports.

Virtually every one of CCS's greenhouse gas-reducing options, which stakeholders find almost impossible to eliminate or alter (as if they wanted to) because the voting procedures are stacked against it, will curtail individual freedom or further burden taxpayers and consumers. Rather than surveying stakeholders in an up-or-down vote, options are instead considered already approved unless enough members (who are political appointees, with almost no scientists or economists) are bold and knowledgeable enough to object to them.

CCS has conducted this cookie-cutter process in more than a dozen states, and more are in its sights. The motives, tactics and plans are not hard to see, but they are a threat.

State government watchdogs and free-market believers need to tag that kid behind the flagpole. He is only getting fatter.

http://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/336889_climatepolicy26.html