Eve of Destruction If Global Warming Continues
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Frank Ackerman and Elizabeth A. Stanton, who are with the Global Development and Environment Institute and the Stockholm Environmental Institute at Tufts, examined the economic impact of unchecked climate change. Their report, commissioned by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and released in late May, concludes that under a “business-as-usual” environmental scenario, by 2100 the United States will likely need to spend at least 1.8 percent of its gross domestic product to meet the costs of hurricane damages, real-estate losses and increased energy and water needs.
Other associated costs could drive the number as high as 3.6 percent of the gross domestic product, the report says. All costs were calculated using 2008 dollars.
Some impacts, though, are beyond calculation. “There are human lives that are lost to climate change,” says Ackerman. “There is the loss of endangered species; the loss of unique habitats; of unique locations that people value that you can’t recreate. What’s the price of the polar bear, of the coral reef? What’s the price of losing the Everglades? A few hundred thousand more lives to violent storms? The damage goes far beyond the dollar value, and the dollars are bad enough.”
The report breaks major climate-change damage into four categories:
* Hurricane damage, caused by the increasing intensity of Atlantic and Gulf coast storms, is estimated at $422 billion annually by 2100.
* Damaged or destroyed real estate as a result of rising sea levels will cost roughly $360 billion.
* Increased demand for energy to provide air conditioning and refrigeration, which will not be offset by reduced heating costs, are estimated at $141 billion.
* And the need to provide additional water, primarily in western states as climate change exacerbates drought conditions and disrupts existing water supplies, is priced at $950 billion.
The report also predicts that based on scientific forecasts, average temperatures in most of the country will rise 13 degrees Fahrenheit, leaving the Boston of 2100, for example, feeling more like the Memphis of today.
While the NRDC report looked only at the effects on the U.S. economy, “the impact on the rest of the world is sure to be even greater in proportional terms,” Ackerman says. “The U.S. is colder and richer than most of the world. The hottest places will be the hardest hit first; the poorest nations will have the hardest time adapting.”
For instance, another recent report for the Environmental Defense Fund by Ackerman and Stanton, with co-authors Ramón Bueno and Cornelia Herzfeld, examines the potential effect of global warming on the Caribbean. Hurricanes, they say, will cause widespread destruction of tourist sites and infrastructure, and in the worst-case scenario, the damage will cost the equivalent of 21 percent of gross domestic product annually in the region by 2100.
“The islands of the Caribbean are very close to sea level and are very much in the path of hurricanes,” Ackerman said. “They are very dependent on tourism, which is very dependent on good weather. Global warming will do enormous damage to the Caribbean economies.”
By Helene Ragovin, reprinted from Tufts University News.
Posted June 24th, 2008 by erku
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Global Warming
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 2008-06-25 23:13.
Wallstreet employees are getting millions of dollars for bonuses for talking on the phone and giving advice for buying and selling and they even have their own foundations, they buy Jets and planes and build huge houses with much needed central air and lots of heat for winter, cutting down trees to have the hugh homes, ask these people what do they really care if we have a melt down, or what are they doing to help cut global warming because the middle class or the poor can't afford the things that contribute to global warming.
predictions
Why would anyone believe any of this? What credentials do they have to make 100 year predictions (indeed, what credentials do any of us have to make such predictions? We can't even predict a few months out much simpler things than the weather). Whence 'a 13 degree increase in temperature' by 2100? Whose computer model did this come out of? We've had exactly zero warming in the past 10 years (since 1998) and a recent Nature article suggests we won't have any for perhaps the next 8-10 years. 70% of the temperature increase in the past 100 years occurred before 1940 and 80% of the increase in man-made CO2 emissions occurred after 1940. Since causes NEVER follow effects (excluding time travel, of course), we can be SURE that CO2 is not creating any warming (if the actual historical facts are considered). In any event there is no scientific basis for believing that the 1 degree or so of warming of the past 100 years is 'outside of normal climate variation' (i.e., science does not make a claim of what is 'normal temperature'), and since there seems to be no warming recently nor going to be for the intermediate future (despite record levels of CO2 in the atmostphere), the following seems self-evident:
1) We don't know if the global temperature is really increasing UNNATURALLY (not having a definition of 'normal temperature');
2) If it is, we KNOW that man-made CO2 emmissions are not the cause (causes don't follow effects);
3) The recent actual temperature records and the most recent temperature projections indicate NO WARMING going on (possibly even actual cooling might occur);
So what's the big deal?
Furthermore, no one has to my knowledge established ANY CONNECTION between the number/intensity of hurricanes and so-called global warming. Indeed, hurricane predictions, like all weather predictions, are .... well... pretty unreliable. Hurricanes seem to have their own cycles.
Predictions of 'losses of land' are not defined in a way that can be evaluated. For sure, climate changes (always has). And there will be dislocations for some, but major benefits for others. I'm sure we know that Greenland was not named after Thor Green, but was actually settled and occupied for about 400 years until the Little Ice Age froze them out. People bemoan the melting of the Artic, which may or may not be happening, but if it is happening that means we'll have access to vast tracts of land and the resources therein which are now inaccessible to us. Of course, 90% of the ice in the world is in Antarctica and 85% of that is in Eastern Antarctica, where the ice pack is expanding. From a global perspective, then, for 85% of 90% of all the surface ice on the planet, the icebergs are not melting. By the way, in the Arctic, the polar bear population has never been greater in modern times. Also Artic temperatures were higher there in the 1930's and 1940's -- before the big increase in atmostpheric CO2. But these are just the facts.
Finally, the UN released a paper a few months ago suggesting that $20T would have to be spent by 2020 to fight global warming ON TECHNOLOGIES THAT HAVE YET TO BE CREATED. Now think about that. How much does a technology yet to be created cost? Who can say? Well, one thing for sure, whatever one says, it's going to be wrong. The point here is that the cost of not doing anything is discussed here, without a consideration of: a) what might be done; and b) how much that might cost. And of course maybe it's not worth the cost (what if we'll have to all be vegans, or have surgically implanted breathing masks, or forced 1 child per family). Maybe we should spend a fraction of all this and provide clean drinking water to the 20% of the world's population that doesn't have it.
To me, these guys are dangerous loons.