The Unequivocal Faith of the Climate Change Quibblers

An article on the Heritage Foundation's blog today shows just how little it takes for some people to put their head back in the sand when it comes to dealing with global warming.

Heritage staffer Conn Carroll declares Study Shows Global Warming Will Not Hurt U.S. Economy.

Carroll pretty much leaves it at that. Other than including a single self-fulfilling quote cherry-picked from the study and another from US News correspondent James Pethokoukis who comes to this strange conclusion:

"So if you do buy into the theory of man-made climate change, the next logical move would surely be to do nothing that would slow growth and technologcal [sic] advancement in rich countries -- such as a cap-and-trade regulatory system or onerous carbon taxes -- and do more to accelerate growth in poor ones through free trade and the exporting of democratic capitalism."

The paper titled "Climate Shocks and Economic Growth" (pdf) by Melissa Dell, Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken is actually very good. It certainly doesn't draw any ridiculous conclusions like the one by Pethokoukis, nor does it present the evidence to make the claims that Heritage Foundation wants to make.

Dell et al. do find that the impacts of global warming on developing nations could be potentially devastating. They conclude that:

"... our contribution in this paper is to reject views that climate does not matter, show that climate's effects are substantial, and identify a group of countries where climate appears to have large effects."

And that,

"... Extrapolated over 100 years, this implies that the median poor country's income will be about 50% lower than it would be had there been no climate change. Moreover, because the effects are large for poor countries - and we estimate no impact on rich countries - the estimates in Table 9 suggest that climate change could substantially widen world income inequality." [my emphasis]

It's mind boggling how little evidence it takes for a free market think tank like the Heritage Foundation to be convinced that we should do nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. With one paper issued at an annual general meeting and Heritage concludes unequivocally that "Global Warming Will Not Hurt U.S. Economy." At the same time Heritage continues to ignore the massive amounts of evidence complied over decades by top scientists of the major negative impacts climate change will have on our way of life and the very nature of our planet.

Of course, it's easy to take such a blind leap of faith for Heritage considering they've been attacking and spreading misinformation about the realities of climate science for years and have reaped the rewards from financially motivated fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil.

Comments

[Cacaoatl]

Global Warming deniers are cowards who don't want to make the tiny changes in their lifestyle that will help fix the problem. Global Warming is real. It was predicted nearly 400 years ago (under a different name of course). And it has been theorized to be man made since the late 1940s.

[ROWSSC]

While the need to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels is imperitive, The theory of AGW has been disproved by so many unbiased, recent scientific studies that the AGW clingers fingers will freeze and break off before they admit they are wrong. It is very difficult to do when they have been blowing the AGW trumpet so loudly for so many years. This article in Pravda is just one of thousands of sets of new data that blows AGW completely out of the water.

http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-0/

[MGhamma]

100,000 years is a long time to wait for ice age conditions to develop. What happens in the mean time?

[MGhamma]

Do you have a reference to said scientific studies?

[FutureRefugee]

In 30 years, nobody will admit they were ever a global warming denier, just like today nobody admits they were ever racist, no matter what they did or thought back in the 1960s (or last year). Chatting at the market in 2040, the people from the Heritage Foundation and the flat-earth trolls will be saying, "It's just terrible that nobody did anything about this climate back in 2000, when it would have been so easy to fix. I tried to speak out, but people were just too greedy to listen. Uh, how much is that rat?"

[ChimpNchief]

Show me any PROOF that global warming is not man caused. Have the glaciers returned? Maybe I missed it.

[ROWSSC]

Yes, you did...along with a lot of other things

[KillTheMessenger]

The "Heritage Foundation" works by to a single, overarching principle:

"My mind's made up, don't confuse me with facts!"

And that's all there is to be said about them.

[MGhamma]

The same overarching principle applies to global warming deniers.

[NL207]

Same principle applies to you.

[DMSmith]

This reminds me of the early drug studies on LSD...where they put the person taking it in a bed, and then took vital signs over a period to study the effect. Missing TOTALLY that the psychoactive effects were extreme.
The effects on OUR economy are all they consider. Thereby missing that the earth will be reeling toward destruction - which will, by the way, effect the economy. But if you're not considering that, you'll think the economic outlook is good.

This is the same type of reasoning that got us into Iraq. These people are mad!!

[valkyrie607]

It's also amazing that these people at the Heritage Foundation look at this report, which says poor countries will be extremely adversely affected, and conclude that this is a good thing, and we should continue what we're doing. I mean, who are these people? Poor countries will experience a 50% cut in GDP. This means that billions more people will experience starvation, sickness, dislocation, all kinds of suffering, and they're like, "Well, they're not Americans. So it's okay. Keep on keepin' on!" Only sociopaths could be so cold and inhumane! Why are they running think tanks and the government as well? Everything is messed up.

[Decipherer]

Unlike the Heritage Foundation, I have concluded a long time ago that the "free" market isn't free.

[gladiatorpodolsky]

Ah, The Unequivocal Faith of those who believe in global warming.
Name-calling is what people do when they don't have a case. If you have a case, make it.
Nobody's stopping you.

In fact, predictions of what the world will be like in 100 years have a long history of being worthless. One has only to look at the predictions of 1909 to see what size bustle they thought women would be wearing today, and how the Panama Canal would reshape the world.
Indeed, if Al Gore could predict the weather 100 hours from now, every meteorologist in the country would be very surprised.

[MGhamma]

The case has been made podolsky. By the science community. It's up to you deniers to come up with a credible counter case. So far, the result has been embarassingly pathetic.

[ROWSSC]

This may help you, but I doubt it.

http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-0/

[from Idaho]

Here is my case, Podolsky.
I see changes in my own back yard that indicate things are quite different. Plants bloom (or don't bloom) at different times of the season than they used to. The rattle snakes emerge much earlier. The creek that usually ran from winter to early summer is nearly dry all year. These are changes outside of the normal wet-dry cycle.

Without a lot of scientific data, which we mortals have not seen nor read, we can still be aware of the dramatic weather changes and what is forcing those changes, such as Gulf warming. We can acknowledge the droughts that have occurred and ended with massive flooding such as in Texas. Some droughts were not ended before the suffering was exacerbated by fires and/or mud slides as in California.

The Heritage Foundation and others might feel that the US will be free of economic harm by the effects of (perceived) global warming, but that would be ignoring history. We must remember the Dirty Thirties.

[LiberalBuzz]

Uh oh, here come the Flat Earthers.

[realpolitic]

If a study said a meteorite were to hit earth tomorrow, the Heritage Foundation would conclude that the reults show rich countries should do nothing to slow growth and poor countries should accelerate growth by importing democratic capitalism. This tune is the only one Heritage sings. And hasn't all this democoratic capitalism worked so well for America in the guise of eliminating regulation during the Bush administration. It almost brought about another Great Depression.

I am surprised the author's of the study estimate no economic impact on climate change for rich countries. Severe weather events, and scientists predict a greatest incidence of them, have tremendous economic impacts on the economies of all countires. Also, such weather events result in hikes in insurance rates in coastal areas and othe vulnerable areas. California, for incidence, has a much greater incidence of brush fires in the last several areas and it is growing. The pesky pine beetle is destroying hundreds of thousands of acreas of forests in Canada as a direct result of climate change and warmer winters, which do not kill the beetle's larvae in sufficient numbers.

And one of the greatest problems is a lack of access to fresh water as mountaintop glaciers continue to melt. The Colorado River is losing a good deal of water due to early melting of snowfall and drought conditions, as are the rivers that feed from the Himalayas. The large scale population movements that likely will result from drought conditions will affect all countires.

[ROWSSC]

While you have made some very valid points here, I just need to mention that the idea that Bush has "eliminated" regulation is just plain wrong on its head. Regulation of the financial sector has actually been increasing under every president since Reagan. The US govt. now spends more and has more people working to regulate the economy than at any time in history.

[rocketman69]

Fight global warming: the poor suffer

Don't fight global warming: the poor suffer

Sucks to be poor I guess.

[peterg76]

Maybe they're assuming the US economy will already be destroyed by corruption by the time global warming is ready to finish the job.

[fumes]

lol my money's on corruption!