Thursday, November 30, 2017

The Social Cost of Obama-Era Climate Calculations

More than 200 cities and 12 states have pledged to uphold the Paris climate accord, even after President Donald Trump announced his administration would withdraw the United States from the agreement. These pledges have led four states — Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York — to enact climate and energy policies based on the Obama-era social cost of carbon (SCC) calculations, which attempt to quantify the long-term economic damages associated with emitting one ton of carbon dioxide into the air. The Obama administration concluded for every ton of carbon dioxide released, $36 worth of damage occurs.
The SCC is based on flawed scientific and economic assumptions. As a result, the dozens of regulations imposed on the energy sector that were based on these calculations significantly and needlessly increase the cost of electricity without delivering any measurable environmental benefits.
The SCC overestimates how much warming will occur from increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the air because it is based on outdated estimates from 2007. These figures were derived from a study that concluded doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would warm the planet by between 1.72 degrees Celsius and 7.14 degrees C, with their “most likely” estimate to be 3 degrees C.
More than a dozen scientific studies have since found the range of possible outcomes for global warming is much smaller than the scenario relied upon in the SCC calculation. For example, a study by a group of climate modelers who conducted analyses for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2013 found a much smaller range of potential outcomes; they concluded there is a low-end estimate of 1.2 degrees C and a high-end estimate of 4 degrees C, with a “best guess” of 2 degrees C. Other studies have found the best estimate to be a 1.64-degree C increase, if accompanied by a doubling of atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations.

https://spectator.org/the-social-cost-of-obama-era-climate-calculations/ 

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