by Jim Rose in environmental economics, global warming Tags: Bjørn Lomborg, global warming, Richard Tol, Yes Prime Minister

Figure 1. The 14 estimates of the global economic impact of climate change, expressed as the welfare-equivalent income loss, as a functions of the increase in global mean temperature relative to today

Source: Richard Tol

The recent IPCC report found that the temperature rise that we are expected to see sometime around 2055-2080 will create a net cost of 0.2-2% of GDP. The UK, Japan, and the US wanted this rewritten or stricken.

The IPCC report showed that strong climate policies would be more expensive than claimed as well – costing upwards of 4% of GDP in 2030, 6% in 2050, and 11% by 2100.

Politicians tried to delete or change references to these high costs. British officials said they wanted such cost estimates cut because they “would give a boost to those who doubt action is needed.”

Sir Humphrey: No, no… Blurring issues is one of the basic Ministerial skills.

Jim: Oh, what are the others?

Sir Humphrey: Delaying decisions, dodging questions, juggling figures, bending facts and concealing errors.

and more from Yes Minister:

Seven ways of explaining away the fact that North-West region has saved £32 million while your department overspent:

a. They have changed their accounting system in the North-West.

b. Redrawn the boundaries, so that this year’s figures are not comparable.

c. The money was compensation for special extra expenditure of £16 million a year over the last two years, which has now stopped.

d. It is only a paper bag saving, so it will have to be spent next year.

e. A major expenditure is late in completion and therefore the region will be correspondingly over budget next year. (Known technically as phasing – Ed)

f. There has been an unforeseen but important shift in personnel and industries to other regions whose expenditure rose accordingly.

g. Some large projects were cancelled for reasons of economy early in the accounting period with the result that the expenditure was not incurred but the budget had already been allocated.

HT: Bjørn Lomborg and wattsupwiththat

Addendum

http://www.reddit.com/user/pnewell was good enough on the climate sceptics subreddit to point out that there is an updated version of the graph I posted at the top that includes corrections for gremlins in Richard Tol’s original paper.

His response reminds me of another passage from Yes Minister where prime ministerial candidate Jim Hacker is arguing with a European commission official about butter mountains.

Hacker said in one room a European commission official was subsidising people to produce milk, while in the next room another official is subsidising people to destroy it.

The response of this European union official was to say that was not true. Hacker asked how it was not true. He was told that the two officials were not on the same floor, the other official paying people to take the milk away is on the next floor.

The main body of my post is:

about propaganda tactics to discredit criticism and suppress inconvenient facts, and the IPCC report facts that even if global warming is a problem, doing anything about it makes us even worse-off.