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Ignoring climate change will cost U.S. big bucks, says group 5

Doing nothing in the face of climate change would cost the U.S. $1.9 trillion a year (in today's dollars) by the turn of the next century, says a new report from green group NRDC. That includes big spending on severe-weather damage, real-estate losses, and energy and water costs. The NRDC report is aimed to counter claims that the Lieberman-Warner bill, set to hit the Senate floor in June, will severely hurt the economy. "If you think it's expensive to do something about climate change, this tells you how expensive it will be to do nothing about climate change," says lead author Frank Ackerman. The report also predicts that unchecked global warming would lead to an average temperature increase of 13 degrees Fahrenheit in most of the U.S. by 2100, so that New York City would have the clime of Las Vegas, San Francisco that of New Orleans, and Boston the average temperatures of Memphis.

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  1. Rowan Posted 9:47 am
    23 May 2008

    FinallyI'm glad someone's bringing this up. Far too often all that gets focused on is the costs of action, rather than the costs of inaction. I only hope it gets decent, or at least some, media coverage.

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  2. belugaboyd Posted 3:44 pm
    25 May 2008

    Hitting the Pocketbook is part of the answer in USHaving taught sustainability around the world largely I long ago realized that the moral imperative for sustainability did not work as a motivational factor for getting business leaders particularly but even municipal leaders as well.  While one would think that a recognition that our behavior puts into jeopardy the survival of the human species including our children and grandchildren (if not ourselves too) would be enough, unfortunately in some countries like the U.S. money talks.  
    So, I commend research like this and that of others before, eg. Costanza, et al 1997 (found that ecosystems services we consume globally to meet our economy exceed $30 trillion but go unpaid for), which puts a price on our devastation because it is the "business case" for sustainability that will get our leaders to act with urgency.

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  3. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 11:49 pm
    26 May 2008

    Shakespeare, he's in the alley...

    ...with his flip-flops and his shorts.
    The climate of Memphis!!!!
    How horrible!
    People have been evacuating Memphis for months now because of those warm summers...going to the Arctic.   Oh wait.  That's melting.   Antarctic.   Anything!  
    http://www.roamingtimes.com/travel/images/Memphis-Beale-S ...

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  4. GoodCheer Posted 5:09 am
    27 May 2008

    What model predicts 13F by 2100?While I think the underlying message is probably totally correct, if the NRDC was using their own (un-peer reviewed) model to make those predictions it really isn't worth the computer memory its written on.
    I would much rather they used the (probably conservative) values established by the IPCC or some other major scientific body.  The outcome would probably still be bad, and it would be much harder to blow off of interest group hogwash.  There's already enough resistance to good science out there, without throwing up straw man like that.

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  5. bobclive Posted 12:42 am
    28 May 2008

    Ignoring climate change will cost U.S. big bucks,Models, models, models more models even more models.

    The term used for models is RIRO, RUBBISH IN RUBBISH OUT.
    ITS THE DATA THAT COUNTS.
    CLIMATE CHANGE, WHAT CLIMATE CHANGE.
    To be able to see signs of global warming linked to CO2 you need two things (1) accurate CO2 data and (2) accurate temperature data. There is accurate CO2 data but only since 1958 at Mauna Loa, as for temperature, well there are thousands of high quality rural weather stations throughout the world and especially in the US and the northern hemisphere that have long histories and NO UHI bias. These stations are totally uncontaminated and provide temperature data from a totally natural environment like Mauna Loa does for CO2.
    What do warmers such as Hanson/Giss do, well, they compare data from a highly UHI contaminated urban city weather station with CLEAN data from a neighbouring RURAL station. They then Use some secret algorithm put all the data through a computer which then gives them the result in degrees C. The odd thing is that the result always shows a steep rising temperature trend when the neighbouring RURAL CLEAN data shows only a flat or a slightly rising temperature trend.
    Would it not have been more logical to have discarded the contaminated data from the Urban stations and used only the clean data from the Rural sites. I believe the answer to this is that this method would not allow the fiddling of data.
    Bad data + good data = very good data, because it shows rising temperatures this is called Hansonisation.
    Good data from rural weather stations =  NO link between CO2 and temperature rise and we don`t want that do we. .

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