This is a guest post by Roddy Campbell. @Roddy_Campbell
Is this a sign that climate impact alarmism is on the wane? Could adaptation be fighting back against Kyoto-style mitigation policies, and even be becoming received wisdom among international agencies and NGOs?
A June 5th Press Release from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), shockingly proclaims, ‘Latin America and the Caribbean face massive economic damages from global warming, report warns’. But it contains some very interesting stuff.
The full report will be released at the Rio+20 Summit in two weeks time, so we’ll have to wait to see how they’ve worked out the damages, estimated to be ‘in the order of $100 billion [per year] by 2050‘ for Latin America and the Caribbean. There’s also a short report teaser here. Let’s not argue about that figure, which is based upon 2C temperature rise over pre-industrial levels. The only clue given is that ⅓ to ½ of the cost is to agriculture.
We can however see what the three organisations who produced the report estimate to be the cost of dealing with this damage by mitigation or adaptation:
The Damage:
‘Estimated annual damages in LAC caused by the physical impacts associated with a rise of 2C over pre-industrial levels are estimated to be of the order of over $100 billion, or about 2% of current GDP’
‘Latin America and the Caribbean face annual damages in the order of $100 billion by 2050 from diminishing agricultural yields, disappearing glaciers, flooding, droughts and other events triggered by a warming planet, according to the findings of a new report to be released at the Rio+20 summit.’
Cost of Mitigation:
‘The report estimates that countries would need to invest an additional $110 billion per year over the next four decades to decrease per capita carbon emissions to levels consistent with global climate stabilization goals.’
‘The report identifies pathways to bend the emission curve to two tons per capita, by promoting zero net emissions from deforestation and other land-use practices by 2030, combined with efforts to eliminate the carbon footprint in the power matrix and transport infrastructure by 2050, at an annual cost of $110 billion.’
That’s over 2% of current regional GDP per annum (and of course its effectiveness is predicated on the rest of the world’s emitters doing the same).
Cost of Adaptation:
‘On the positive side, the cost of investments in adaptation to address these impacts is much smaller, in the order of one tenth the physical damages, according to the study …’
‘… overall costs to adapt are estimated to be on the order of 0.2% of GDP for the region, or about 10% of the costs of physical impacts, indicating that adaptation is generally very cost-effective.’
Yes, that’s right. 1/10th of the cost. 0.2% of GDP. Versus GDP growth of over 6% in 2010. And ‘adaptation is generally very cost-effective’. Praise be.
I’m not sure what the conclusion to this post is, other than that I am simultaneously unsurprised at the ratio of costs, and mildly surprised that this report for Rio has been produced.
I am also unsurprised that what coverage I have seen has focussed on the headline — ‘massive economic damages’– not on the trivial cost of adaptation.
I am of course delighted for the people of Latin America and the Caribbean.
And I’m amusing myself by pretending to be a benevolent dictator of the region, wondering how my population will use the $90 billion per annum saving of adaptation over mitigation over the forty year period to improve their lives. I might even round it up to $4 trillion for them. I dare say they’ll spend it better than I would anyway.
I’m not sure if alarmism is on the wane or on the wing! Perhaps the word finally reached them that even the UN’s Secretary-General has made a “paradigm shift” and dropped the previously obligatory scary stories (not to mention “global warming” and “climate change”) from his more recent pronouncements:
Mind you, he’s also urging students to “make some noise” and “shame … governments into doing more”
[Source for this and other related details I mention below at Tall tales from the “dark” side]
Such reports are not usually
conjured upwritten over-night and it could well be that the word on the UNEP propaganda street is now “mitigation” is passé, “adaptation” might be a better “sell” for the “innovative new sources” of “longer term financing” of a target of “$100 billion per annum by 2020″ [Ban Ki-moon, at COP 17, Dec. 6, 2011]They couldn’t scrap their report at this late date, so they cobbled together an adaptation bid – and maybe they decided that the $100 billion was nice round number which they could use as well … with a slight change to the target date!
You should do a commentary on the World Bank report but just be aware that one of the lead authors is from NYSE / Bluenext the global carbon exchange. This report does not have any credibility. Don’t take my word for it just search on the authors. This should be investigated it is just plain wrong that an international organization that is part of the UN system is manipulating public opinion.
They will, Ben. What is amusing is the minuscule difference between ‘mitigation’ and what the idiots like to call ‘BAS’. The Brazilians are not that stupid ( though they enjoy Western emasculation! ). The ‘West’ is bankrupt (literally!).
And, of course, it is based on broken and proven fallacious economics, an economics that has failed more times than is worth counting. An ‘economics’ that believes, or pretends to, in ‘equilibrium’, despite history, even recent history. And we should respect what these beaurocrats say?
Energy (E) stored as mass (m) in the core of the Sun generates the stream of heat, light, particles and fields (electric, magnetic, gravity) that engulfs Earth, controls its climate and sustains life.
Energy (E) stored as mass (m) in the core of uranium atoms vaporized Hiroshima on 6 Aug 1945.
Energy (E) stored as mass (m) in the core of plutonium atoms destroyed Nagasaki on 9 Aug 1945.
Frightened world leaders “saved the world” from destruction by establishing the United Nations on 24 Oct 1945.
Information on energy in the core of the Sun was obscured [1,2] in 1946 and continues to be misrepresented today.
[1] Fred Hoyle, “The chemical composition of the stars,” Monthly Notices Royal Astronomical Society 106, 255-59 (1946)
[2] Fred Hoyle, “The synthesis of the elements from hydrogen,” Monthly Notices Royal Astronomical Society 106, 343-83 (1946)
See: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-105
We must certainly never underestimate the economic importance of the Caribbean glaciers.
This is a guest post by Roddy Campbell…….
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Thanks
At last. The fourth box in the precautionary principle is filled in and “doing something when there is no threat” gets a cost. About time.
If your main motivation is to redistribute wealth from the developed to the developing world, it doesn’t matter whether you go for mitigation or adaptation. As long as the money is channeled via the organisations producing the report, the report will have served its purpose.
We’ve got used to the “what’s not to like about it?” argument applied to the benefits of clean cheap green energy, even in absence of warming. This report is covering the possibility of warming but no action to mitigate it. Hurricanes and drought, or action to prevent hurricanes and drought, the WWF will be there to deal with any situation, and take its cut.
David Sinfield, is that what you meant by “The fourth box in the precautionary principle is filled in?”
So, the the loss of 2% of GDP to warming caused damages is bad but spending 2+% of GDP on mitigation is good. Applying the Precautionary Principle, I judge the mitigation proposed as ‘harm’. As any environmentalist can shout to you, this means that the authorites should either deny the proposal or require that mitigiation be proposed for the harm caused by the intial mitigation. The modified proposal, with the mitigation for the mitigation, should be provided for additional analyisis and comment prior to it being adopted.
If the threat from global warming was as bad as the alarmists claim it is, then being an anti-nuclear-power protester would be a capital crime.
The full costs of global warming assume that people will not adapt on their own. So if rising sea levels flood their land, people will continue living in houses as water comes up to their ankles, then knees. Farmers will not build dykes, nor change crops as the weather changes. Neither will new reservoirs be built in areas of falling rainfall, nor flood defenses improved where the rainfall increases.
If catastrophic global warming happens, then people will adapt. Their ability to adapt will depend on the level of economic output.