Sorry, Climate Change Wouldn't Hurt America's Economy

You missed the point of the article

"Climate Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century," by Melissa Dell and Benjamin Jones, is a very interesting, if ultimately inconclusive, paper. Unfortunately, your commentary on it missed or misrepresented its main point.

What the paper shows is that in the historical record for the second half of the twentieth century, hotter than (national) average temperatures were statistically correlated with slower growth in poor countries, but not in rich countries. No great surprise there, since poor countries are on average hotter and more agricultural than rich countries. The authors try various heroic extrapolations from this result, pointing out that it implies greater global damages from temperature change than most economic models assume. (This is an interesting new style of economic research in general, looking at historical climate fluctuations and their correlations with economic outcomes.)

What the paper DOESN’T tell us is that rich countries will be immune to the very different, and greater, climate stresses of the current century. As we move into a realm of higher temperatures, more extreme events, and more adverse changes in precipitation, the impacts of climate shocks will be qualitatively different from the historical record. E.g. James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA, now says that sustaining as much as 450 ppm of CO2 in the long run puts us on a path to an ice-free Earth with many meters of sea-level rise as everything melts, total disruption of freshwater systems based on mountain glaciers and snowpack, etc. You can’t anticipate the costs of that from the data in this paper. Of course, the costs will be greater for poor countries; that’s always true. But the rich world won’t be unscathed in the future, just because it was little harmed by late-twentieth century temperature fluctuations.

Dr. Frank Ackerman

Stockholm Environment Institute-US Center

Tufts University

Somerville, Massachusetts

Frank Ackerman of MA @ Jan 05, 2009 15:23:31 PM

The Left Wings Oil Money

The Right is perceived to have all the oil money - although the Left always gets their greedy share from the barons and the Saudis. This perception enables the Left to create their own barons; the Green Barons. Green money for the Left is the counter to oil money for the Right. The only difference being that oil actually runs the world's economies, while "green" merely baffles them. Soros and Gore and the apparatchiks at the U.N. deserve prosecution, not praise, for hollering fire in the crowded theater. The papal dispensation that IS the utterly ridiculous carbon credit scheme is worse than anything Madoff ever conjured. At least Madoff restricted his nefarious malfeasance to various individual investors. Gore and Bono and that Virgin Atlantic idiot, Soros, Ban, Obama and an ever-widening idiot menagerie of dupes, fools, snake-oil salesmen, charlatans and dubious capitalists go beyond the individual investor. Or, should one say they want ONE individual investor – the Earth.

Che Guevara's Bullet Hole of GA @ Jan 05, 2009 14:39:28 PM

.. and others choose blissful ignorance

Who talked about being scared? I personally do not live in fear of something I have little to no control over - but that doesn't mean I ignore it completely.

Ignoring this simply because its beyond your (and my own) realm of imagination is akin to sticking your head in the sand.

A Human @ Jan 05, 2009 14:16:14 PM

Y2K

Doesn't anyone notice the similarity between the Climate Change hysteria and the Y2K hysteria?

Paul A'Barge of TX @ Jan 05, 2009 14:13:11 PM

The Sky Is Falling

"world devastation"... "the oceans would rise by no less than 50 metres."... "total collapse"...

Some people like to scare themselves.

No Chicken Little @ Jan 05, 2009 14:02:44 PM

50 meter rise in sea level might be a problem

Wake up. Stop questioning what is a fact - global climate change is happening, and it is quickening.

From this article in a Canadian new paper: http://www.thestar.com/News/article/552439

the writer states: "If the eastern ice sheet were to disappear, the oceans would rise by no less than 50 metres."

Yes, currently the eastern ice shelf is stable but the concept of "current" these days is changing (for the worse) frequently. How long will it be until it becomes unstable - who knows, but when it does, the concept of "Low economic impact" is laughable - a 50 meter rise is going to wipe out a lot of cities in wealthy nations.

A Human @ Jan 05, 2009 13:12:28 PM

GDP a flawed measure

The referenced study only proves that GDP is a very poor measure of human well-being. A 'total collapse' in the poorest countries is referenced. In the real world this translates to millions, perhaps billions suffering from malnutrition and starvation. In the the world of GDP, it doesn't really matter, because those people just aren't worth as much in dollar terms as rich people. If we believe that all people have intrinsic worth however we have to look at things differently.

The author's solution is a further extension of unfettered and unregulated capitalism. A few names come to mind: Bear-Stearns, AIG, Lehman Brothers.... It seems when the going gets rough, those who have decried government intrusion into the market turn to the government for a bailout.

An alternative: government incentives for renewable energy, energy efficiency, public transit, that create millions of green jobs in the US while averting the worst of the climate crisis. The middle class and low-income in the US benefit, in addition to the poor worldwide. The already rich may not get as much richer under this scenario as under the author's, but the vast majority of the world's population benefits.

Eli Y of GA @ Jan 05, 2009 11:08:15 AM

Climate Change

Isn't it interesting now that the Democrats are in power, that the global warming/climate change fear mongering crowd is getting competition in the media? Hmmm

Makes you think all this hoopla over the past few years just might be that - hoopla.

At least some of the truth is starting to appear. Too bad too many politicians, mostly Dems, are not interested. Oh, they want control.

S of MN @ Jan 05, 2009 10:57:30 AM