[TheClimate.Vote] October 7, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Wed Oct 7 06:21:39 EDT 2020

/*October 7, 2020*/

[aleatory means chance]
*Trillions of extra economic damages predicted in new study of climate 
change effects*
by Peter Thorley, University of Warwick
OCTOBER 6, 2020
The world is underestimating the economic effects of climate change by 
trillions of dollars, according to a new study co-authored by scientists 
from the University of Warwick..
The study, led by Georgetown University and published in Nature 
Communications today (6 October), shows that current economic 
forecasting models fail to account for unpredictable variations in 
global temperatures, rather than the more predictable rising 
temperatures themselves.

Co-author Professor Sandra Chapman, of the University of Warwick 
Department of Physics, said: "When we cause a system like the Earth's 
climate to warm, it does not warm smoothly and uniformly. Changes in the 
Earth's temperature translate into economic damages and our work 
estimates the additional economic damage that we can expect due to these 
fluctuations in earth's global mean temperature on top of the smooth 
gradual increase due to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere."

"Our study identifies a new category of economic costs--those arising 
from the unpredictable, but unavoidable fluctuations in global climate 
that we're bound to face," says Georgetown's McCourt School of Public 
Policy Professor Raphael Calel, an economist who co-authored the study 
with three scientists from the United Kingdom. "To prevent these losses, 
we need a more diverse set of policy responses with increased investment 
in adaptation and resilience."

*Cost of Inaction*
The United States, for example, relies on a forecasting model developed 
by Yale economist William Nordhaus, for which he was awarded the Nobel 
Prize in 2018, as well two other forecasting models that descended from 
Nordhaus' work.

But Calel says that these models fail to take into account the 
unpredictable fluctuations in global temperatures observed year after year.

"This may seem like a small oversight, but our study shows these 
fluctuations will create trillions of dollars of additional economic 
damages," Calel says. "Previous work uses a well-known procedure for 
estimating global mean temperature changes, and the economic damages 
that follow. In our study, we amend this procedure to capture the 
variability in global temperatures as well.

The extra damages--anywhere from $10 trillion to $50 trillion over the 
next 200 years when measured in today's dollars, according to the 
study--show us that the cost of inaction is substantially higher than 
previously believed, he says.

Calel also notes that whilst there is a clear need to reduce emissions 
at a faster rate to avoid predictable climate change, we also need to 
prepare to mitigate the effects and costs of these fluctuations, which 
are significant.

*Making New Policies*
Among the policy changes the professor recommends are a shift of food 
supplies toward a more resilient and low-impact model; investments in 
infrastructure that will better withstand future weather extremes; and 
the creation of agencies and social supports to help the millions of 
people who will be displaced from their homes.

"The benefits that these investments will provide are much greater than 
previously believed," he says.

The McCourt School professor authored the study with Sandra C. Chapman 
from the University of Warwick; David A. Stainforth of the same 
department and also the London School of Economics and Political 
Science; and Nicholas W. Watkins from the London School of Economics and 
Warwick University as well as Open University in the UK.

"We knew that the coupled climate-economy models had omitted global 
temperature variability, and we wanted to understand and quantify the 
consequences of this," Calel says.

"Temperature variability implies greater economic damages from climate 
change" is published in Nature Communications.
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-trillions-extra-economic-climate-effects.html
- -
[source]
*Temperature variability implies greater economic damages from climate 
change*
Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 5028 (2020)
Abstract

    A number of influential assessments of the economic cost of climate
    change rely on just a small number of coupled climate-economy
    models. A central feature of these assessments is their accounting
    of the economic cost of epistemic uncertainty--that part of our
    uncertainty stemming from our inability to precisely estimate key
    model parameters, such as the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity.
    However, these models fail to account for the cost of aleatory
    uncertainty--the irreducible uncertainty that remains even when the
    true parameter values are known. We show how to account for this
    second source of uncertainty in a physically well-founded and
    tractable way, and we demonstrate that even modest variability
    implies trillions of dollars of previously unaccounted for economic
    damages.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18797-8/figures/2
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18797-8/figures/3
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18797-8

[red and blue on the history of a propaganda battle - video]
*Ben Santer on the Climate Red Team*
Oct 5, 2020
greenmanbucket
Given another term, the Trump administration will double down on climate 
denial, and is considering appointing a "Red Team" of climate deniers to 
evaluate (read distort) climate science.
But this already happened.
The American Physical Society staged a "Red team, blue team" exercise in 
2014, in evaluating and updating the Society's statement on climate change.
Ben Santer of Livermore Labs was a member of the "Blue" team, in support 
of consensus, science, and reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgDoYNNNf98

[of course]
*More coverage of climate wanted*
Major news audiences think the media should do more to address climate 
change, says study led by UC researcher Abel Gustafson
https://www.newswise.com/articles/more-coverage-of-climate-wanted

[Yale study]
*Climate Change in the Minds of **U.S. News Audiences*
*This report is an analysis of public opinion about climate change among 
the regular U.S. audience*
(American adults who frequently watch, read, or listen to the content) 
of each of six major U.S.
news sources: CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, the Weather Channel, and the 
national nightly
network news (on CBS, ABC, or NBC). The findings in this report are 
based on data from three
nationally representative surveys conducted by the Yale Program on 
Climate Change
Communication and the George Mason University
Executive Summary
Desire for More Information

    - Large majorities in most news audiences are interested in news
    stories about a wide range
    of global warming topics (p. 11-13).
    - However, majorities in all news audiences feel they are not very
    well informed about
    global warming (p. 10). Fewer than 20% in any news audience feel
    “very well informed.”
    - Majorities in the CNN, NPR, MSNBC, and the nightly network news
    audiences think the
    media should be doing more to address global warming, as do about
    half of those in the
    Weather Channel (51%) audience. In the Fox News audience, only one
    in three viewers
    (34%) think the media should be doing more (p. 10).

https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Climate-Change-in-the-Minds-of-US-News-Audiences.pdf

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - October 7, 2003 *

Arnold Schwarzenegger succeeds Gray Davis as the governor of California 
after a highly controversial "recall election." Schwarzenegger--who had 
been demonized by talk radio host Rush Limbaugh in the weeks prior to 
the election as not being a "real" conservative--would become one of the 
very few prominent elected Republican officials urging action on climate 
change.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?178547-2/california-recall-acceptance-consession

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html> 
/
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote

/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
to news digest./

*** Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only.  It does not carry 
images or attachments which may originate from remote servers.  A 
text-only message can provide greater privacy to the receiver and sender.
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for democratic 
and election purposes and cannot be used for commercial purposes. 
Messages have no tracking software.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote 
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, 
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for 
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct 
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List 
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to 
this mailing list.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20201007/4eff7375/attachment.html>