Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt suggested global warming could end up being beneficial to humanity, pointing out that civilizations tend to flourish during warm periods.
“Is it an existential threat, is it something that is unsustainable, or what kind of effect or harm is this going to have?” Pruitt told Nevada’s KSNV TV on Tuesday.
“We know that humans have most flourished during times of, what, warming trends,” Pruitt said in the interview. “I think there are assumptions made that because the climate is warming, that necessarily is a bad thing.”
WATCH:
While Pruitt’s comments sent liberal pundits reeling, his argument is not completely out of line with economic projections of global warming. Prominent environmental economist Richard Tol released a study in January that found “the initial impacts of climate change may well be positive.”
Tol looked at 27 different projections of the costs and benefits of future warming, which combined produced positive net benefits over the next 40 to 50 years. Economic costs didn’t go negative until temperatures hit around 1.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
“Current estimates indicate that climate change will likely have a limited impact on the economy and human welfare in the twenty-first century,” Tol wrote in his study. “However, in the long run, the negative impacts dominate the positive ones.”
However, other economists and climate scientists often point to the alleged negative consequences of man-made warming, such as more extreme weather, higher sea levels, and lower crop yields.
“Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100 in the year 2018?” Pruitt said.
Pruitt also mentioned his support for a red-blue team debate on climate science. Pruitt had planned to pit two teams of scientists against one another on climate science, but so far, EPA has made nothing official.
Pruitt’s remarks come after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a Georgetown University audience that women would be disproportionately harmed by global warming.
“I would say that particularly for women, you’re absolutely right, they will bear the brunt of looking for the food, looking for the firewood, looking for the place to migrate to when all of the grass is finally gone as the desertification moves south,” Clinton said.
Read more at Daily Caller
Human civilization from, agriculture forward, has all occured in this interglacial period. Could it have happened during the much longer cold part of the ice age cycle? We can’t know.
Isn’t it nice to not have a scaredy pants running the EPA ?
Hasn’t life overall gotten better as the earth emerges from the most recent ice age ? Yet the public has been fed a steady diet of global warming fear mongering from people like Al Gore and his Chicago Climate Exchange pal Obama . How is that even possible ?
The current revelation’s of Democrat spying shows axactly how and has the exact same DNA of the global warming scam .
The Democrats through their bag men and operatives bought the FBI , a FISA judge , most of the MSM and a whole bunch of politicians . And like the global warming scam they almost pulled it off .
Anyone think it is a pure coincident that Democrat bag men are running away from this unraveling treason shit show ?
Hillary was right in claiming …if that bastard gets elected we are all going to hang . At least they know it’s coming unlike Seth Jones .
Good on Scott Pruit for not being a coward like many of the rest of them .
The human race was born in Africa. Good things thrive in warmth. Warm is positive. Cold, generally, is not.
Somehow, climate alarmism has convinced millions of people that up is down and black is white. They’ve done this by brain washing them in childhood. I consider it abuse.
Of course we should consider all the positives and negatives. We should also remember that mankind has always dreamed of controlling the weather. We’re still dreaming.