50 to 1 Climate mitigation costs 50 times more than Adaptation

I am not arguing that $500B would and could and indeed should do a lot of good. I am just suggesting that if you could feed the hungry, given them all clean water and curre can ER for that amount then we would probably be doing so!

Icarus

 

It would cost a lot less than $500B to feed the hungry in this country if the only issue was food.
11 Facts About Hunger in the US | Do Something

The school in the bad neighborhood my mom worked in gave poor children breakfast and lunch. Part of the reason for the program was even with food stamps some of the parents would not feed their children.

SNAP is around $100B/year now (well at least until cuts). Part of the problem is people that need the program don't go on the program. More of the problem is people that don't understand nutrition make poor choices, or worse sell the food stamps to buy other things. Add in mental illness, drug abuse, alcoholism, homelessness and it is difficult to feed some of the hungry. We can do a better job. Part of it is outreach, part education, certainly we are spending enough money, but it isn't getting to where it needs to go.

In Africa, where my friends charity works, it costs about $16 (one time) to provide a person with secure clean water that did not have access to it before. Its so cheap because the labor is either volunteer, or local paying the low local wages. A us government program would end up costing much more, but the government can funnel money into such organizations. The gates foundation and the US government have done a great job reducing aids in africa.

Now what I read was the US government spent about $40B on climate research over the last decade, that is a far cry from $500B. Climate research could be used to help farmers plant crops more likely to survive future conditions and actually lower the cost of food.

 

What a good writeup for further discussion. (My only rub is crediting the results to specific presidents. Many of the things happened not because the president supported it, but because it was not a high enough political priority to derail.)

 

Right,

Or more importantly, ignoring the CONTEXT of the legislation. E.g., Bush routinely agreed to minor pro-environmental agendas while giving up the farm to the oil lobby in the same package. This is actually why I view AG posts as propagandist drivel.

As an example, he loves to post that Li'l Bush was the first president to acknowledge AGW. He conveniently ignores that had Gore become president, AGW action would have had a 15 year head start; that in the same speech Bush emphasized that the significance of AGW was 'unclear'; and that he was authorizing 50 million USD for further study (effectively defunding research.)

 

I only meant to use the presidents as time markers, and to show that the good and bad policies took a long time to develop.

 

Got it.

It just reminded me of discussing European history with a European. When they say something was built during the 3rd reign of Henry XXIV of Slobovia, I still have to convert it to a specific year since I don't have Henry XXIV's third reign memorized. It just felt like deja vu to be doing the same history delineation with US Presidents.

 

I beleive mojo was suggesting we could "That money could have brought clean water to every living being on the planet ,cured cancer, fed the starving." worldwide for $500B

The school in the bad neighborhood my mom worked in gave poor children breakfast and lunch. Part of the reason for the program was even with food stamps some of the parents would not feed their children.

SNAP is around $100B/year now (well at least until cuts). Part of the problem is people that need the program don't go on the program. More of the problem is people that don't understand nutrition make poor choices, or worse sell the food stamps to buy other things. Add in mental illness, drug abuse, alcoholism, homelessness and it is difficult to feed some of the hungry. We can do a better job. Part of it is outreach, part education, certainly we are spending enough money, but it isn't getting to where it needs to go.

In Africa, where my friends charity works, it costs about $16 (one time) to provide a person with secure clean water that did not have access to it before. Its so cheap because the labor is either volunteer, or local paying the low local wages. A us government program would end up costing much more, but the government can funnel money into such organizations. The gates foundation and the US government have done a great job reducing aids in africa.

Now what I read was the US government spent about $40B on climate research over the last decade, that is a far cry from $500B. Climate research could be used to help farmers plant crops more likely to survive future conditions and actually lower the cost of food.[/quote]

EDIT, I messed up AG's quote, sorry,

Icarus

 

$500B could do a lot of good, but none of those things. There is no way the US federal government has spent any where near that money on climate research.

 

I thought this was a global issue, why has it reverted, as things on this forum often seem to do, to a USA issue? Poverty exists outside the USA and starvation and dirty water supplies and climate change. Why the references to USA, lets talk global. Why did the USAs GHG emissions fall with no reason? Could it have been from government programs and emission caps and maximum emission averages for vehicle manufactures? Nah, i guess not. Must have been a recovery or solar cycles.

 

Can anyone explain why people in the USA feel they have a right to claim China and India are increasing emissions when both countries have a lower CO2 emission per capita than the USA? Why shouldn't the USA (and Australiafor that matter) aim to reduce emissions to lower than China and India then make noise about China and India's emissions? To me it's a bit like having weeds growing over the fence and complaining that the neighbours haven't cut their lawn for a month. Clean up at home to show the neighbours how it's done, lead by example or lead from the front because if you try to push a mule you will likely get covered in ****!

 

I can try to explain, although you probably want AG.

Americans do not WANT to curb emissions, so they come up with excuses. The latest popular ones goes thus:

1. Any cuts the US makes will be offset by developing countries, so why bother ? In effect the US says "unless every country curbs emissions, no one should bother."

2. It is unfair to ask Americans to pay their per capita share of world wide GHG cleanup. It is viewed as a success or prosperity tax.

I think these people are morons, so do not shoot the messenger.

 

Can you say 'Recession'? 'Rising fuel prices'? 'Unemployment'? I knew you could.

A major shift from coal to natural gas also plays a big factor.

 

I suppose that globally, there are about 3 billion people with inadequate access to clean water and a similar number cooking their food over whacked heat sources that make the house a carbon monoxide and PM2.5 hotspot. If those stoves are not burning dried poop, then they are deforesting because they burn wood at remarkably low efficiency.

Make a proper cookstove? Bam, it's been done, $100 each, so there goes $300 B. Adequately purify water at the needed scale? I do not think that would cost less.

This is not all that would be required to 'lift people out of abject poverty'. Some electricity would be helpful as well. So, let us say $1 trillion but it could be 2. And then we have coastal defenses to consider.

Defining the issue in this way is not really the point, rather, who might provide the funds? Even Gates Foundation, who has been emptying others' pockets for years , hasn't that kind of money.

Currently, global governments haven't said they have that kind of money either. The fossil-C burning industry uniquely does. By saying so, I am not expressing hatred of them, just saying that is where the money is. Where the money should be correctly applied, I can't help you, but improving the 3/7 on the bottom seems appealing in contrast to the 0.01/7 on the top. Yes, I know that they earned it, accordingly to 19th century mores (more-rays). But now we are in the 21st century and is there no rooom to re-examine those ideas?

Won't be settled by me, nor even by this august body of PC posters. But it is something to consider. If we can just figure a way to pull it off w/o enriching Al Gore ( the focus of all evil)...

 

One should never follow an individual's issue, whether it's global warming or anything else, if that issue is their ultimate concern. Using Gore as an example; not only does Gore have everything to gain from his global warming agenda (and he has gained quite a lot) he also has everything to lose.

 

So, if we could just rationally examine the scientific contributions of Mann, Jones, Trenberth, Hansen, Spencer, Lintzen (followed by a longer list) without getting bogged down by their personal baggage, that would be good. Am I reading you right?

Fossil-C burning interests have a few trillions to gain by selling products. And, probably they should gain. Professional climate worriers may have a a thousandth of that to gain by selling ideas. And, perhaps they should gain as well. Let both be judged by the potential benefit of the things they have on offer. I am boldly extending MassP ideas, so don't accept it silently.

Evaluating overall benfits and harms, for this large, complicated human enterprise, within a climate system that we don't quite yet understand. That is the hard part, and why it's good we have a 50 to 1 thread here.

 

I would say that is quite naive, to haphazardly put a large ratio here. Some things are quite negative.

If we think of something like a smally raised oil tax, to get people into more efficient cars, that is revenue neutral then by all means, there is not harm done to the economy, and the policy makes sense.

If on the other hand we look at the policy Spain had to install solar quickly, that was expensive enough to drag their economy to financial crisis, and helped bring all of europe into recession, the costs seem quite high. What is the cost of that mitigation, versus say enacting a solar policy in 2020 that creates massive building but at much lower priced panels? The US could though learn from Spain and Germany and set up a system that gets a couple of percent solar built in the next decade. Or the european pro-diesel policy that causes health concerns? What are those costs, versus say a policy in 2020 to put people into plug-in cars. What is the cost of moving to nuclear too fast? Was fukashima low cost?

We can't haphazardly drift into bad policies for global warming becuase we think it will be cheaper today. There are two big things though that drag on the US economy, coal and its pollution and oil and their imports. Those two things could be addressed sooner rather than later, and costs to reduce cCC in the future will be smaller. Cars can easily stay on the road 20 years, making the fleet more efficient now is the only way it will be efficient enough 30 years from now. Coal plants seem to last forever (median age 45 years), and do not work well with wind power. Making sure new ones are only the cleanest burning, while retiring the most polluting and ineffient, saves a lot of future money. Economic analysis says simply dispatching ccgt before coal as is done in the UK would greatly reduce coal pollution and ghg from the electricity sector.

 

We need to evaluate the value of things...not just the cost!

Icarus

 

Yep, and those costs include costs to the economy.

The cost of streamling regulation for solar is very small, but politics gets in the way. Cost of solar bad regulation in the US is significantly higher than Germany.

The cost of ghg reduction in electricity is much lower to the government and the consumer if only coal is taxed and grandfathering is removed. If we do it like europe, then taxes need to be much higher for the same reduction. Grid improvements and changes to dispatch are also much cheaper than a cap and trade policy based on ghg alone.

Raising the price of oil through taxation may actually improve the future economy. It may have negative costs, as future oil spikes may have less of a detrimental effect on the economy.

 

^ Can't disagree!

Icarus