Fixing Climate Change May Add No Costs, Report Says

[futurecurrents]

We can pay a little now, or pay much more later.



***************************************************************





A global commission will announce its finding on Tuesday that an ambitious series of measures to limit emissions would cost $4 trillion or so over the next 15 years, an increase of roughly 5 percent over the amount that would likely be spent anyway on new power plants, transit systems and other infrastructure.



When the secondary benefits of greener policies — like lower fuel costs, fewer premature deaths from air pollution and reduced medical bills — are taken into account, the changes might wind up saving money, according to the findings of the group, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.



The report seeks to upend some longstanding assumptions. It points out, for instance, that the cost of renewable energy has been plunging so fast that most previous analyses of its potential role are out of date. “Renewable energy sources have emerged with stunning and unexpected speed as large-scale, and increasingly economically viable, alternatives to fossil fuels,” the report said.



Perhaps the most important overall point of the report is that economic policies around the world are still aligned to favor fossil fuels, even though unchecked emissions from coal, oil and natural gas represent a potentially grave risk to future generations. “We have to get the prices right,” said Helen Mountford, who worked on the report and is the director of economics at the World Resources Institute, a Washington think tank.



Nowhere is this issue clearer, the commission said, than in the $600 billion a year spent to subsidize fossil fuels, more than six times the level of subsidies going to renewable energy.





http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09...av=top-news&_r=0

 

[dbphoenix]

OSLO/LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Investments to help fight climate change can also spur economic growth, rather than slow it as widely feared, but time is running short for a trillion-dollar shift to transform cities and energy use, an international report said on Tuesday.

The study, by former heads of government, business leaders, economists and other experts, said the next 15 years were critical for a bigger shift to clean energies from fossil fuels to combat global warming and cut health bills from pollution.

"It is possible to tackle climate change and it is possible to have economic growth at the same time," Felipe Calderon, a former Mexican president and head of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, told a news conference.

Many governments and businesses wrongly fear that measures to slow climate change will undermine jobs and growth, he said. The report is meant to guide world leaders at a Sept. 23 climate summit hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Almost 200 nations are working on a U.N. pact, due to be agreed in Paris in late 2015, to rein in rising greenhouse gas emissions. Progress to combat global warming has been slow despite two decades of work.

"How the world's largest and fastest-growing cities develop will be critical to the future path of the global economy and climate," the report said, recommending a shift to "compact cities" that used less energy and invested in public transport.

Cities are home to half of the planet's 7.2 billion people, generate 80 percent of global economic growth and account for about 70 percent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, it said. But many urban areas are sprawling out of control.


TIME SHORT

The report said the next 15 years were vital because, in that time, "the global economy will grow by more than half, a billion more people will come to live in cities" and new technology will change businesses and lives.

A U.N. panel of experts says swift action is needed to avert more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising seas. It says it is at least 95 percent probable that human activities, rather than natural swings in the climate, are the main cause of warming.

Overall, the Commission said that $90 trillion in investments were needed in the next 15 years to keep a high-carbon model of infrastructure for cities, transport, energy and water systems, or an average $6 trillion a year.

A shift to low-carbon energy, such as wind or solar power, and greener cities would cost a further $270 billion a year - a 4.5 percent increase in the bill that could be offset by other savings, for instance on fuel.

"Investing in a low-carbon economy is a cost-effective form of insurance against climate risk," it said.

Among drawbacks with the existing economy, the report said air pollution cost 4.4 percent of world gross domestic product, with a high of more than 10 percent of GDP in China.

Jeremy Oppenheim, director of the report, said China and other emerging nations had grown aware of the risks of coal-based growth and fast-expanding cities. "Things are very different even compared with five years ago," he told Reuters.

In rich nations, inefficiencies still abounded in cities such as New York, London or Paris. "Twenty percent of fuel costs in cities are spent looking for parking spots," he said.

Unlike past climate change studies which have focused on the risks of inaction, the report seeks to show economic benefits of investments which could also help the environment, he said.

The report urged governments to phase out fossil fuel subsidies totalling more than $600 billion a year, far more than $100 billion in annual support given to renewable energy.

And it urged better use of farmland. "Restoring just 12 percent of the world's degraded agricultural land could feed 200 million people by 2030, while also strengthening climate resilience and reducing emissions," it said.

In April, a report drawing on the work of 1,000 experts said that a shift to low-carbon energy would trim about 0.06 percent a year off world economic growth.

It did not compare costs and benefits as starkly as Tuesday's report.

Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank chief economist who was a member of the commission, urged governments to abandon what he called an "artificial horse race" between economic growth and action to combat climate change.

"The challenge is to combine the two," he said. "That is the only sensible route," he said. (Reporting By Alister Doyle and William Schomberg)

 

[loyek590]

I'm not really that worried about climate change.
When sea levels start rising dramatically, get back to me
I live in the Midwest, and the respected meteorologists tell me global warming should create fewer tornados.

 

[futurecurrents]

I'm not really that worried about climate change.
When sea levels start rising dramatically, get back to me
I live in the Midwest, and the respected meteorologists tell me global warming should create fewer tornados.

Midwestern States

Across the Midwest, signs of our rapidly changing climate become clearer each year. Records show that spring is arriving sooner, dangerously hot weather is occurring more often, and winters are becoming warmer and less snowy.

Climate research shows that if global warming emissions continue to grow unabated, the Midwest can expect dramatic temperature increases and other climate changes over the course of this century. If the rate of emissions is lowered, however, projections show the changes will be significantly less.

The Growing Health Risks of Heat Waves and Hot Summer Weather
Rising temperatures are not just a concern for the future. Dangerously hot weather is already occurring more frequently in the Midwest than it did 60 years ago.

The report, Heat in the Heartland: 60 Years of Warming in the Midwest, presents an original analysis of weather data for five major urban areas — Chicago, Cincinnati,Detroit, Minneapolis, and St. Louis — as well as five smaller nearby cities.

The results from the analysis are clear: Hot summer weather and heat waves have been increasing in cities in the nation’s heartland over the last six decades on average, with significant, and growing, implications for public health.

Confronting Climate Change in the Midwest
How will global warming affect your state? A series of in-depth state fact sheets look at the potential consequences of climate change across the Midwest.

Illinois | Indiana | Iowa | Michigan | Minnesota | Missouri | Ohio | Wisconsin

 

[loyek590]

Midwestern States

Across the Midwest, signs of our rapidly changing climate become clearer each year. Records show that spring is arriving sooner, dangerously hot weather is occurring more often, and winters are becoming warmer and less snowy.

Climate research shows that if global warming emissions continue to grow unabated, the Midwest can expect dramatic temperature increases and other climate changes over the course of this century. If the rate of emissions is lowered, however, projections show the changes will be significantly less.

The Growing Health Risks of Heat Waves and Hot Summer Weather
Rising temperatures are not just a concern for the future. Dangerously hot weather is already occurring more frequently in the Midwest than it did 60 years ago.

The report, Heat in the Heartland: 60 Years of Warming in the Midwest, presents an original analysis of weather data for five major urban areas — Chicago, Cincinnati,Detroit, Minneapolis, and St. Louis — as well as five smaller nearby cities.

The results from the analysis are clear: Hot summer weather and heat waves have been increasing in cities in the nation’s heartland over the last six decades on average, with significant, and growing, implications for public health.

Confronting Climate Change in the Midwest
How will global warming affect your state? A series of in-depth state fact sheets look at the potential consequences of climate change across the Midwest.

Illinois | Indiana | Iowa | Michigan | Minnesota | Missouri | Ohio | Wisconsin

nice link, very interesting. It should be quite obvious. I can burn more oil in one day than it took a million years to produce. At some point that will catch up with you.

 

[piezoe]

We can pay a little now, or pay much more later.

***************************************************************

A global commission will announce its finding on Tuesday that an ambitious series of measures to limit emissions would cost $4 trillion or so over the next 15 years, an increase of roughly 5 percent over the amount that would likely be spent anyway on new power plants, transit systems and other infrastructure.

When the secondary benefits of greener policies — like lower fuel costs, fewer premature deaths from air pollution and reduced medical bills — are taken into account, the changes might wind up saving money, according to the findings of the group, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.

The report seeks to upend some longstanding assumptions. It points out, for instance, that the cost of renewable energy has been plunging so fast that most previous analyses of its potential role are out of date. “Renewable energy sources have emerged with stunning and unexpected speed as large-scale, and increasingly economically viable, alternatives to fossil fuels,” the report said.

Perhaps the most important overall point of the report is that economic policies around the world are still aligned to favor fossil fuels, even though unchecked emissions from coal, oil and natural gas represent a potentially grave risk to future generations. “We have to get the prices right,” said Helen Mountford, who worked on the report and is the director of economics at the World Resources Institute, a Washington think tank.

Nowhere is this issue clearer, the commission said, than in the $600 billion a year spent to subsidize fossil fuels, more than six times the level of subsidies going to renewable energy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09...av=top-news&_r=0

The red line is the temperature "anomaly" the light gray is the max and minimum reported for those dates; the blue is the temperature range for that day in 2008 in Boston. Does this scare you FC? this is from Lindzen's paper in J. Physicians and Surgeons, Vol13(3) Fall 2013.

Your ridiculous graph, with multiple y-axes all with vastly different scales, that you keep posting ad nauseum is just like the humorous charts Max E. Pad posted. In pad's charts multiple y-axes have been used and their scales adjusted to make it look like they show a strong correlation, from which you are supposed to conclude that eating cheese causes bed wetting, or some equally ridiculous conclusion. Correlation does not prove cause, but you don't have to know that nor be a scientist to see from Lindzen's chart that there is nothing in the observed record to suggest anything out of the ordinary is going on.

This is a lessen in charting for you FC, notice how everything in Lindzen's chart is temperature and it is all on the same scale on one y-axis. This is how you make a meaningful plot that allows you to evaluate the relative magnitudes. You apparently did not learn that when you studied environmental science. Sorry for you.

As those of us who are more informed about this issue have repeatedly pointed out, all temperature changes so far observed are well within the historical record of natural temperature swings for our planet. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest the ridiculous conclusion that the slight increase in CO2 is causing run-a-way global heating.

If the hypothesis is wrong then the models based on it are wrong. It's no more complicated than that.

 

[futurecurrents]

Piehole just took another dump.

 

[futurecurrents]

So you are basically saying that CO2 cannot be a greenhouse gas. Because if it was, rising levels would have to cause rising temps and you say it doesn't. Interesting, but absurd, position you are taking there.

Okay, since you seem to be confused with that chart, here's some other looks. Are you jem?

Remember piehole, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Here's another chart you will have problems understanding.

Let me know if we need to review the basic science of greenhouse gasses.

View attachment 144584

The red line is the temperature "anomaly" the light gray is the max and minimum reported for those dates; the blue is the temperature range for that day in 2008 in Boston. Does this scare you FC? this is from Lindzen's paper in J. Physicians and Surgeons, Vol13(3) Fall 2013.

Your ridiculous graph, with multiple y-axes all with vastly different scales, that you keep posting ad nauseum is just like the humorous charts Max E. Pad posted. In pad's charts multiple y-axes have been used and their scales adjusted to make it look like they show a strong correlation, from which you are supposed to conclude that eating cheese causes bed wetting, or some equally ridiculous conclusion. Correlation does not prove cause, but you don't have to know that nor be a scientist to see from Lindzen's chart that there is nothing in the observed record to suggest anything out of the ordinary is going on.

This is a lessen in charting for you FC, notice how everything in Lindzen's chart is temperature and it is all on the same scale on one y-axis. This is how you make a meaningful plot that allows you to evaluate the relative magnitudes. You apparently did not learn that when you studied environmental science. Sorry for you.

As those of us who are more informed about this issue have repeatedly pointed out, all temperature changes so far observed are well within the historical record of natural temperature swings for our planet. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest the ridiculous conclusion that the slight increase in CO2 is causing run-a-way global heating.

If the hypothesis is wrong then the models based on it are wrong. It's no more complicated than that.

 

[gwb-trading]

Curtain, reviews come down on taxpayer-funded climate change musical
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...wn-on-taxpayer-funded-climate-change-musical/

The curtain has come down on Climate Change: The Musical and reviews of the taxpayer-funded play about global warming are downright icy.


The play, which is actually entitled "The Great Immensity," and was produced by Brooklyn-based theater company The Civilians, Inc. with a $700,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, ended its run early amid a storm of criticism from reviewers and lawmakers alike. It opened a year late, reached just five percent of its anticipated audience and likely fell short of its ambitious goal of informing a new generation about the perceived dangers of man-caused climate change.


Plus, it apparently wasn't very good.


“Despite fine performances, the musical mystery tour is an uneasy mix of fact and credulity-stretching fiction. It’s neither flora nor fauna,” New York Daily News reviewer Joe Dziemianowicz wrote in a review at the time. “[The] songs — whether about a doomed passenger pigeon or storm-wrecked towns — feel shoehorned in and not, pardon the pun, organic.”


The play, which featured songs and video exploring Americans’ relationships to the environment, opened in New York in April with a three-week run before going on a national tour that was supposed to attract 75,000 patrons. But it stalled after a single production in Kansas City, falling short of the lofty goals outlined in a grant proposal. It was envisioned as a chance to create "an experience that would be part investigative journalism and part inventive theater,” help the public "better appreciate how science studies the Earth’s biosphere” and increase “public awareness, knowledge and engagement with science-related societal issues.”


According to a plot description on the theater company’s website, "The Great Immensity" focuses on a woman named Phyllis as she tries to track down a friend who disappeared while filming an assignment for a nature show on a tropical island. During her search, she also uncovers a devious plot surrounding an international climate summit in Auckland, New Zealand.


The description touts the play as “a thrilling and timely production” with “a highly theatrical look into one of the most vital questions of our time: How can we change ourselves and our society in time to solve the enormous environmental challenges that confront us?”


Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, said the dramatic debacle was a waste of public money.


“There is no doubt that the Great Immensity was a great mistake,” Smith told FoxNews.com. “The NSF used taxpayer dollars to underwrite political advocacy dressed up as a musical. And the project clearly failed to achieve any of its objectives.”


In a statement to FoxNews.com, the NSF said it is too soon to tell if the grant funds were wasted.


“This particular project just concluded in August and the final report has not yet been submitted to NSF,” the statement said. “Final reports are due to NSF within 90 days following expiration of the grant. The final report will contain information about project outcomes, impacts and other data.”


But Smith and others in Congress said the foundation owes an explanation to lawmakers - and taxpayers.


“The NSF has offered no comment, neither a defense of the project nor an acknowledgement that funding was a waste of money,” Smith said. “The NSF must be held accountable for how they choose to spend taxpayer dollars.”


Other reviews of the play were similarly dismal.

(More at above url)

This is what they are wasting tax payer money on!

 

[futurecurrents]

Oh and now piehole parade out his next fool and fraud. Lindzen is almost as much of a joke as Salby, Monckton, Ball, Spencer and the rest of the paid-for science whores.

Yeah, we can trust a scientist working for the CATO Institute like Lindzen does. He's a doubt merchant. Just like the ones that fought for the tobacco companies.

I can't wait to see the next fraud/fool you parade out for us.