July 24th 2008
The Latest Bogus Climate Change Study
I
t’s official! Real scientists – not those global warming skeptic scientists – have studied the impact of climate change on eight states and, boy, are they bally-hooing the results that they’ve released today. The real scientists say in their news release:
Climate change will carry a price tag of billions of dollars for a number of U.S. states, says a new series of reports from the University of Maryland’s Center for Integrative Environmental Research (CIER). The researchers conclude that the costs have already begun to accrue and are likely to endure.
Combining existing data with new analysis, the eight studies project the long term economic impact of climate change on Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey and Ohio. Studies on additional states are in the works.
“We don’t have a crystal ball and can’t predict specific bottom lines, but the trend is very clear for these eight states and the nation as a whole: climate change will cost billions in the long run and the bottom line will be red,” says Matthias Ruth, who coordinated the research and directs the Center for Integrative Environmental Research at the University of Maryland. “Inaction or delayed action will make the ink run redder.”
And here’s what they’ve got on their eight states:
- Colorado: More than $1 billion in losses due to impacts on tourism, forestry, water resources and human health from a predicted drier, warmer climate.
- Georgia: Multi-million dollar losses from predicted higher seas along Georgia’s coast.
- Kansas: Losses exceeding $1 billion from impact on agriculture of predicted warmer temperatures and reduced water supply in much of the state.
- Illinois: Billions of dollars in losses from impact on shipping, trade and water resources. Warmer temperatures and lower water levels predicted for much of the state.
- Michigan: Billions of dollars in losses from damage to the state’s shipping and water resources. Warmer temperatures and lower water levels predicted for much of the state.
- Nevada: Billions of dollars in losses from a much drier climate and pressure on scarce water resources. Water limitations could affect tourism, real estate, development and human health. Many western states may confront similar challenges.
- New Jersey: Billions of dollars in losses from higher sea levels and the impact on tourism, transportation, real estate and human health.
- Ohio: Billions of dollars in losses from warmer temperatures and lower water levels and the resulting impact on shipping and water supplies.
Two points:
First, these are not real scientists. Matthias Ruth has a PhD in geography and is now working as an economist. He doesn’t have a clue about what causes climate change (or doesn’t), what its extent and duration will be, or what its probable impacts are – heck, he’s even using the much-discredited hockey stick model as the core data for each of the studies’ identical primers on climate change.
In short, he’s just a paid lackey who’s merely accepting other people’s models as true and running them through his own economic models and asking us to believe him because he works for a university think tank for hire. His colleagues on the study? Graduate assistants.
And who are those other people who are providing the modeled data for Ruth’s review? That hired his think tank for hire? Here’s a clue you might want to pursue for your answer: Buried at the bottom of the study’s on-line title page is this: “Support for this research was provided by the Environmental Defense Fund.” Do you think that just might be a biased group … more biased even than an oil company? Here’s Peter Goldmark, the EDF’s climate program director, answering why EDF works on climate:
“Nothing has more potential to alter forever the world our children inherit.”
So he’s got a biased view – it’s bad, we caused it, and an expensive cap-and-trade system is the best way to address it – and he hired a bunch of non-scientists to dress up a pile of rigamrole and present it as a scientific study.
EDF’s position in support of cap-and-trade takes me to my second point. Speaking out against the concept when it came before the Senate as the Lieberman-Warner “America’s Climate Security Act,” Sen. James Inhofe said:
“The Lieberman-Warner bill will burden American families with additional energy costs and significantly harm the United States economy. Senators are going to be asking the American people to pay more for home energy and pay higher prices at the gas pump for no climate benefit. This bill will simply result in real economic pain, for no climate gain. MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen correctly summed up these types of efforts in March when he said, ‘Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat’s dream. If you control carbon, you control life.’ …
“The American people are being asked to pay significantly more for energy just so lawmakers in Washington can say they did ‘something’ about global warming. And just what will cap-and-trade legislation actually do? Cap-and-trade policies have been tried in Europe and they have proven to be an utter disaster. European emissions continue to climb while our current policies have resulted in emissions tailing off in the U.S. If we were going to impose enormous costs to our economy, a carbon tax would be a much more efficient and transparent approach.
“[A]n MIT study earlier this year found [the cap and trade approach] would cost $3500 per family of four. According to an EPA analysis, Lieberman-McCain would impose a price increase for oil of 20% and for natural gas of 23%.
Now those guys at MIT might just be real scientists, so let’s look at that $3,500 per family of four. The estimated 2006 population of the eight states CIER studied was 57.8 million, or 14.5 million families of four. Lieberman-Warner would have raised their annual cost of living by $3,500 each, or $50.6 billion.
Now let’s go back to the impacts of the states, which I assume are permanent, not annual, but what the heck, let’s just go ahead and call them annual so we can compare the data conservatively. Oh, wait. The real scientists actually never presented a single projected total cost of climate change for any of the eight states they studied. All we have is the news releases summary of two states with “more than a billion,” one with “multi-million” and five with “billions.” Write that out and it’s five multi-billions, two billion pluses, one multi-millions. A nice, tight, scientific number.
Is it more or less than the $50.6 billion price tag of EDF’s proposed cap-and-trade system? My hunch, based just on proportional population, is that it’s less … a lot less, somewhere about $15 to $20 billion.
So, boil it all down, strip out the hysteria and the puff, and you get this: An environmental group is advocating that you spend $50.6 billion to avoid an economic impact of $15 to $20 billion.
But when this story breaks in the MSM tonight and tomorrow, you won’t read that, will you?
Update: My bud Neil, who deserves a hat-tip for this story, comments on it:
Correct. If you are pure of thought and intent and action, and you follow the word of GaiaTheEarthMother, then it is permissible to use whatever means to achieve the goals of GaiaTheEarthMother. If scientific evidence supports GaiaTheEarthMother, it is superfluous; if scientific evidence contradicts GaiaTheEarthMother, it is pernicious – in either case it can be ignored.
Posted in Climate change, Global warming | No Comments yet » | |
Leave a Reply
[The "Comment Box" is WYSIWYG except that you have to double space between paragraphs!
Type it the way you want it to look -- Just remember to double up those line spaces.]
You must be logged in to post a comment.
