Environment
Trump rejects key conclusion of US government climate report
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has rejected a central conclusion of a dire report on the economic costs of climate change released by his own administration, but economists said the warning of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in global warming costs is pretty much on the money.
Just look at last year with Hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma, they said. Those three 2017 storms caused at least $265 billion in damage , according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The National Climate Assessment report , quietly unveiled Friday, warned that natural disasters are worsening in the United States because of global warming.
It said warming-charged extremes “have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration.” The report noted the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015.
“The potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century,” the report said. It added that if emissions of heat-trapping gases continue at current levels,
The president said he read some of the report “and it’s fine” but not the part about the devastating economic impact.
“I don’t believe it,” Trump said, adding that if “every other place on Earth is dirty, that’s not so good.”
Nearly every country in the world in 2015 pledged to reduce or slow the growth of carbon dioxide emissions, the chief greenhouse gas.
“We’re already there,” said Wesleyan University economist Gary Yohe, who was a reviewer of the national report, which was produced by 13 federal agencies and outside scientists. “Climate change is making a noticeable impact on our economy right now: Harvey, Florence, Michael, Maria.”
Yohe said, “It is devastating at particular locations, but for the entire country? No.”
Economist Ray Kopp, a
“I believe this is going to be a devastating loss without any other action-taking place,” Kopp said Monday. “This is certainly something you would want to avoid.”
Earlier, the White House had played down the report. Spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in an emailed statement that the report “is largely based on the most extreme scenario, which contradicts long-established trends by assuming that, despite strong economic growth that would increase greenhouse gas emissions, there would be limited technology and innovation, and a rapidly expanding population. “
Throughout the 29-chapter report, scientists provide three scenarios that the United Nations’ climate assessments use. One is the business-as-usual scenario, which scientists say is closest to the current situation. That is the worst case of the three scenarios. Another would envision modest reductions in heat-trapping gases, and the third would involve severe cuts in carbon dioxide pollution.
For example, the $155 billion a year in extra
The report talks of hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses in several spots. In one graphic, it shows the worst-case business-as-usual scenario of economic costs reaching 10
Yohe said it was unfortunate that some media jumped on that 10
“The 10
Kopp, on the other hand, said the 10
“This is probably a best estimate,” Kopp said. “It could be larger. It could be smaller.”
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Associated Press writer Jonathan Lemire in New York contributed to this report.
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Follow Seth Borenstein at http://twitter.com/borenbears and Zeke Miller at http://twitter.com/zekejmiller
Seth Borenstein And Zeke Miller, The Associated Press
Economy
Extreme Weather and Climate Change
From the Fraser Insitute
Contrary to claims by many climate activists and politicians, extreme weather events—including forest fires, droughts, floods and hurricanes—are not increasing in frequency or intensity, finds a new study published today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.
“Earth Day has become a time when extraordinary claims are made about extreme weather events, but before policymakers act on those extreme claims—often with harmful regulations—it’s important to study the actual evidence,” said Kenneth Green, a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute and author of Extreme Weather and Climate Change.
The study finds that global temperatures have increased moderately since 1950 but there is no evidence that extreme weather events are on the rise, including:
• Drought: Data from the World Meteorological Organization Standardized Precipitation Index showed no statistically significant trends in drought duration or magnitude—with the exception of some small regions in Africa and South America—from 1900 to 2020.
• Flooding: Research in the Journal of Hydrology in 2017, analyzing 9,213 recording stations around the world, found there were more stations exhibiting significant decreasing trends (in flood risk) than increasing trends.
• Hurricanes: Research conducted for the World Meteorological Organization in 2019 (updated in 2023) found no long-term trends in hurricanes or major hurricanes recorded globally going back to 1980.
• Forest Fires: The Royal Society in London, in 2020, found that when considering the total area burned at the global level, there is no overall increase, but rather a decline over the last decades. In Canada, data from Canada’s Wildland Fire Information System show that the number of fires and the area burned in Canada have both been declining over the past 30 years.
“The evidence is clear—many of the claims that extreme weather events are increasing are simply not empirically true,” Green said.
“Before governments impose new regulations or enact new programs, they need to study the actual data and base their actions on facts, not unsubstantiated claims.”
- Assertions are made claiming that weather extremes are increasing in frequency and severity, spurred on by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions.
- Based on such assertions, governments are enacting ever more restrictive regulations on Canadian consumers of energy products, and especially Canada’s energy sector. These regulations impose significant costs on the Canadian economy, and can exert downward pressure on Canadian’s standard of living.
- According to the UN IPCC, evidence does suggest that some types of extreme weather have become more extreme, particularly those relating to temperature trends.
- However, many types of extreme weather show no signs of increasing and in some cases are decreasing. Drought has shown no clear increasing trend, nor has flooding. Hurricane intensity and number show no increasing trend. Globally, wildfires have shown no clear trend in increasing number or intensity, while in Canada, wildfires have actually been decreasing in number and areas consumed from the 1950s to the present.
- While media and political activists assert that the evidence for increasing harms from increasing extreme weather is iron-clad, it is anything but. In fact, it is quite limited, and of low reliability. Claims about extreme weather should not be used as the basis for committing to long-term regulatory regimes that will hurt current Canadian standards of living, and leave future generations worse off.
Author:
The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educational
organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal and ties to a global
network of think-tanks in 87 countries. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for Canadians,
their families and future generations by studying, measuring and broadly communicating the
effects of government policies, entrepreneurship and choice on their well-being. To protect the
Institute’s independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research.
Visit www.fraserinstitute.org
Environment
Ottawa’s plastic ban may actually hurt the environment
From the Fraser Institute
” a market research firm, found that in New Jersey… “non-woven polypropylene… consumes over 15 times more plastic and generates more than five times the amount of GHG emissions during production per bag than polyethylene plastic bags.” In other words, the ban helped increase pollution. “
Despite a court ruling late last year, which deemed the Trudeau government ban on single-use plastic (cutlery, straws, grocery bags, etc.) “unreasonable and unconstitutional,” the ban essentially remains in place pending appeal or further regulatory action. But according to the government’s own data and analysis, plastic waste is a virtual non-issue in Canada, as 99 per cent of all plastic waste is disposed of safely in landfills or is incinerated. And less than 1 per cent of Canada’s plastic waste finds its way into the environment.
Moreover, there’s great potential for people to replace banned plastic items, including plastic grocery bags, with other plastic bags not included in the ban such as heavy gauge “reusable” shopping totes and other types of plastic trash bags made of heavier-gauge plastics than the filmy bags banned from grocery stores.
In New Jersey, for example, while plastic grocery bag use did decline following a statewide ban in 2022, plastic substitute materials skyrocketed, plastic consumption rose threefold for heavier reusable bags and sixfold for woven and non-woven polypropylene bags, which are not produced domestically, not recycled nor do they contain recycled content. Freedonia, a market research firm, found that in New Jersey “increased consumption of polypropylene bags” contributed to a “500% increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to non-woven polypropylene bag production” and that “non-woven polypropylene… consumes over 15 times more plastic and generates more than five times the amount of GHG emissions during production per bag than polyethylene plastic bags.” In other words, the ban helped increase pollution.
In California, an environmental interest group called CALPIRG recently issued a report generally favouring plastic bag bans, observing that they do indeed reduce the use of banned bags. However, the report notes that “loopholes,” which allow consumers to use heavier plastic bag alternatives, results in more plastic consumption and waste—not less. According to CALPIRG, plastic bag disposal rates increased in one jurisdiction (Alameda) from 157,000 tons in the year before the ban on single-use grocery bags to 231,000 tons in 2021. On a per-person basis, it rose from 4.1 tons disposed of per 100,000 people to 5.9 tons disposed of per 100,000 over that same span.
In both New Jersey and California, efforts are underway to “fix” the loopholes that have allowed proliferation of plastic consumption and waste in the wake of plastic bag bans. However, these actions are unlikely to work unless they can somehow stop consumers from simply switching to plastic garbage bags or buying online heavier-gauge plastic shopping totes (and trashing them after a few shopping trips). Consumers have already shown they’re prepared to do these things.
Here at home, there’s no reason to believe that Canadian consumers will react any differently to a ban on single-use plastics. Canadians are just as likely to reach for the convenient substitute, whether that’s heavier paper products or heavier plastic products not covered under existing bans.
If sanity reigned, Canada would get ahead of the perverse consequences likely to flow from plastic bans by scrapping the entire idea and allowing consumers to consume what they believe best suits their lives and pocketbooks. Canada already has an admirable waste management system that keeps 99 per cent of disposed plastics safely locked away in environmentally protective landfills or eliminates them completely through incineration.
There’s no need for plastic bans or a governmental takeover of the plastics sector via regulation. Government should throw these bans in the bin.
Author:
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