What science could teach Ocasio-Cortez about climate change

New York Post ^ | 1-27-19 | Bjorn Lomborg

[DeweyCA]

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Far from the “end of the world,” the impact of warming is what we’d expect from roughly a single economic recession taking place over the next half century.

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If the world isn’t ending, and the impact of global warming by 2030 is much less than 0.2 percent to 2 percent of GDP, then we need to start comparing costs with benefits.

This is the bread and butter of William Nordhaus, the only climate economist to win the Nobel Prize. His careful work over many decades shows that a globally ­coordinated, moderate and rising carbon tax could reduce temperatures modestly. This would cost about $20 trillion and avoid some climate-related harms, ensuring a net benefit of $30 trillion over coming centuries.

But aiming to reduce temperatures more escalates the costs and eventually leaves the planet $50 trillion worse off. Limiting temperature ­increases to 2°C or less, as many leaders promise, would prove even more costly.

Green fretting about Armageddon is nothing new, of course. In the 1960s, mainstream environmentalists worried that the world was running out of food. In the 1980s, acid rain was going to ­destroy the planet’s forests. There were good reasons for concern, but a panicked response led to a poor, overly expensive response.

We need to get smarter. Climate change is a problem but not the end of the world.

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If Ocasio-Cortez had...said: “The world is going to see costs worth about 1 percent of GDP in 50 years if we don’t address climate change — and your biggest issue is how to pay for it?” Well, yes: We need to make sure our solution doesn’t cost more than the problem. If we look at science and stop believing the end of the world is nigh, our decisions will be much smarter.

[Mastador1]

Knowing her, nothing.

She is like the Scarecrow, only less attractive and not as intelligent.

[exDemMom]

A lib explained that it is like a refgrigerator using energy to make cold air.

Let me guess--that lib has never taken a physics class? And actually has no clue about how CO2-driven global warming supposedly works?

Refrigerators, of course, work by moving heat from one place to another.

[IncPen]

When I was a kid, the 'population explosion' was one of the popular leftist tropes: THERE WON'T BE ENOUGH FOOD.

Now, thanks to the declining birthrate of millennials who have been convinced that raising kids is too hard (and how could I forget, thanks, abortion!), there won't be enough people paying into Social Security. So no one can retire.

These people are idiots.

[DeweyCA]

My sister, who married when she was in college, and has been happily married for over 35 years, never had any children because she believed Paul Ehrlich’s book about “The Population Bomb.” Her husband, a very nice, but also liberal guy, wanted to have kids. All they ever had was one golden retriever. Of course, now they believe in global warming and all the rest of the stuff that they hear on the liberal media. Btw, her husband is a successful clinical psychologist. Educated fools.