Guest essay by Eric Worrall

President Trump’s administration has struck back at the Fourth National Climate Assessment, claiming that the report was rigged to disregard reasonable responses to warmer temperatures.

Clashing with Trump, U.S. government report says climate change will batter economy (Reuters) – Climate change will cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century, hitting everything from health to infrastructure, according to a government report issued on Friday that the White House called inaccurate. … The studies clash with policy under President Donald Trump, who has been rolling back Obama-era environmental and climate protections to maximize production of domestic fossil fuels, including crude oil, already the highest in the world, above Saudi Arabia and Russia. White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said the new report was “largely based on the most extreme scenario, which contradicts long-established trends by assuming that…there would be limited technology and innovation, and a rapidly expanding population.” The government’s next update of the National Climate Assessment, she said, “gives us the opportunity to provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes.” …

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-usa/clashing-with-trump-u-s-government-report-says-climate-change-will-batter-economy-idUSKCN1NS19D

We’ve seen this kind of baseless scaremongering before, like with the “End of Beer” story which was floating around a month ago.

As the Brewers Association pointed out, a key flawed assumption with the “end of beer” prediction was that farmers would attempt no adaption whatsoever to changed circumstances, they would keep attempting to grow Barley in exactly the same way as today with no attempt to change growing regions or planting times to match the new temperature range.

Predicting the “end of beer” while disregarding the option of adapting to changed circumstances is like predicting everyone who jumps into water will drown, because you are disregarding the possibility people in water will attempt to swim and stay afloat.

It is easy to predict bad outcomes, if you rig the report process to ignore other possibilities.

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