Posted on 07/09/2021 12:03:37 PM PDT by karpov
How much does climate change* actually affect GDP? How much will currently-envisioned climate policies reduce that damage, and thereby raise GDP? As we prepare to spend trillions and trillions of dollars on climate change, this certainly seems like the important question that economists should have good answers for. I'm looking in to what anyone actually knows about these questions. The answer is surprisingly little, and it seems a ripe area for research. This post begins a series.
I haven't gotten deep in this issue before, because of a set of overriding facts and logical problems. I don't see how these will change, but the question frames my investigation.
An illogical question
The economic effects of climate change are dwarfed by growth.
Take even worst-case estimates that climate change will lower GDP by 5-10% in the year 2100. Compared to growth, that's couch change. At our current tragically low 2% per year, without even compounding (or in logs), GDP in 2100 will be 160% greater than now. Climate change will make 2100 be as terrible as... 2095 would otherwise be. If we could boost growth to 3% per year, GDP in 2100 will be 240% greater than now, an extra 80 percentage points. 8% in 80 years is one tenth of a percent per year growth. That's tiny.
In the 72 years since 1947, US GDP per capita grew from $14,000 to $57,000 in real terms, a 400% increase, and real GDP itself grew from $2,027 T to $19,086 T, a 900% increase. Just returning to the 1945-2000 growth rate would dwarf the effects of climate change and the GDP-increasing effects of climate policy.
(Excerpt) Read more at johnhcochrane.blogspot.com ...
1 degree warmer after 175 years. I just had an argument with some haughty-taughty PhD on Quora about it. It sucks trying to debate someone significantly more educated than I am lol. And it’s a lot better than another ice age. The last one nearly wiped us out.
I don’t even think the earth is warming.
Just climate cycles, or our awareness of something that has been going on all along - 100 years ago we didn’t really keep records or people didn’t live in some of these locations...
I lived in Alaska for 3 years. We had some big earthquakes while I was there. Never once was it reported on the MSM in the lower 48? Why? “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, did it make any noise?”
Likewise, our life is a blink of an eye. You have cycles that take between 1,000 - 10,000 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal#:~:text=Most%20estimates%20for%20the%20duration,to%206%20degrees%20per%20day and what we call recorded history or personally perceive is a mere snapshot in time. When you think this is a record breaking summer and hotter than you ever remember, is that really the case? LOL
Climate science is based on mostly shoddy science. Their “models” if you want to call them that are BS.
It’s not something that you can really reproduce in a lab.
It’s all speculative, it’s all based on assumptions where they do not really know the relative weights of the variables, or in some cases even all the variables... It’s more fad/trend than science.
I can just as well create the argument of the coming ice age as actually was theorized in the 1970s as the impending climate disaster unless we control the amount of soot going into the atmosphere. Just wait until a nice cold winter and then spread that idea. LOL
But... issues like “global warming” now rebranded as “climate change” (opens up the scope - great technique) are social/political movements. It gives kids a cause or a purpose to rally around. There is money to be made, just ask Al Gore, John Kerry... Climate change is big money for some businesses too! Think about Honeywell and Dupont and how much they made off the ozone hole. That made them billions since everyone needed to buy new refrigerants (which really don’t go bad). BTW, soon you will be mandated to buy all new refrigerants again. Government today is often the tool by which big corporations by law require you to buy their product.
https://heatpumpingtechnologies.org/us-epa-confirms-future-restrictions-on-high-gwp-refrigerants/
Public safety or the environment are the front, making money is the reality. Ask Pfizer how that works:
When you hear many of these environmental issues being brought up, be more than critically thinking, be cynical. It’s BS MOST of the time. Starting in the 1970s environmentalism became a political tool.
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