A pair of notorious and discredited climate alarmists published an editorial last week in the New York Times titled, “Climate Change Will Cost Us Much More Than We Think.”
The article by Naomi Oreskes and Nicholas Stern presents no economic data or analysis but merely asserts that global warming is worse than previously thought, so therefore the costs to deal with it will be more than previously thought, too.
In fact, just the opposite is true.
It is difficult to claim global warming is worse than previously thought when even the United Nations has been forced to reduce its estimates for future warming and to correct climate alarmists on important claims.
After the UN predicted global warming will increase by 0.3 degrees Celsius per decade, slowly rising temperatures forced the UN to lower its projected warming estimate to 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade.
How does that make warming “worse than we thought”?
Similarly, the United Nations has thrown cold water on various other climate alarmist claims and predictions.
Regarding hurricanes, the UN’s 2018 Interim Report admits, “There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity (i.e., intensity, frequency, duration).”
Regarding tornadoes, the UN 2018 Interim Report admits, “There is low confidence in observed trends in small spatial-scale phenomena such as tornadoes.”
Regarding floods, the UN 2018 Interim Report admits, “There is limited to medium evidence available to assess climate-driven observed changes in the magnitude and frequency of floods at regional scales … Furthermore, there is low agreement in this evidence, and thus overall low confidence at the global scale regarding even that sign of these changes.”
Oreskes and Stern attempt to divert attention away from all this good news by claiming “increased heat decreases food production, which leads to widespread malnutrition, which diminishes the capacity of people to withstand heat and disease and makes it effectively impossible for them to adapt to climate change.”
Except crop production is not decreasing.
In fact, crop production has been consistently improving as temperatures modestly warm, with global crop production setting new records almost every year.
This year will be no exception, as the UN predicts global crop production will set yet another new record in 2019.
Observes the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2019 biannual Food Outlook,
“World cereal output is forecast to reach a new record level of 2 722 million tonnes (including rice in milled equivalent), which is 71 million tonnes higher than in 2018.
“Among the major cereals, wheat, maize, and barley would account for most of the rise in cereal production, with projected year-on-year increases of 5.0 percent, 2.3 percent and 5.4 percent, respectively. Global rice production is likely to remain close to the 2018 all-time high.”
The New York Times and other media outlets have accepted and trumpeted the Oreskes and Stern assertions without question or scrutiny. Straight-up facts and the United Nations itself have proven how ridiculous their assertions are.
Global warming is, and will continue to be, costing us much less than previously thought – assuming it costs us anything at all.
James M. Taylor is an American lawyer, senior fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute and a CFACT contributor. James Taylor is a keen analyst of science and public policy and a competition level poker player.
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If the governments would get out of the way and stop pushing/subsidizing costly and inefficient so-called green energy any bit of warming will be a net-positive to the world’s economies and the well-being of the world’s populations, especially in the poor countries of Africa and Asia. Unfortunately there seems to be no such possibility.
The climate bed wetters need to explain why they oppose a greening earth .
Isn’t it a scientific fact plants and trees grow better with more CO2 .
The proof is readily available in satellite photos .
They would like less CO2 why ? To kil plants and people ?
There is no correlation between what people like Naomi Oreskes and Nicholas Stern tell and the real world. These people have political agendas to support and have created a fabric of lies to support them. The real harm is from the climate change movement. This has caused thousands of fuel poverty deaths in the UK, 340,000 homes in Germany to have their power cut off because they can’t afford the cost of renewable energy, and is preventing many of the one billion people in the world who don’t have electricity from obtaining it. If this movement gets its way things will be much worse. High energy prices will shut many industries down. The cost of renewable energy will send the cost of power sky high while at the same time we start facing blackouts from this unreliable source of energy.