SageBrush said:
This article
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/oct/01/new-study-finds-incredibly-high-carbon-pollution-costs-especially-for-the-us-and-india
should be required reading by all, and forced reading for all the bozos who think a $10 a month surcharge to the electricity bill to curb global warming is too much.
I have not read the source article yet but I expect to see resource wars not included. Even so, they estimate $50 a ton CO2 in the US and a global impact of $400 a ton.
So e.g.,
a kWh of electricity produced from coal emits ~ 2.2 lbs of CO2
> 900 kWh causes $50 of domestic and $400 of global damage
That works out to 5.5 cents a kWh domestic cost and 44 cents a kWh global cost.
NG is not too far behind those numbers.
Since the actual article has been discussed very little I'll comment on it.
I think it is an interesting article on a particular study that has a novel way of looking at the problem.
This is the an earlier paper that is referenced quite a bit in the paper this article is based on.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature15725
It gets a little mathy in some spots but the big takeaway is that there is evidence for an ideal window of temperature for productivity and a sharp decline once you warm past a certain threshold. Projected warming will move some very large economies past that ideal point and close to the inflection point where the sharp decline occurs.
I think it is a reasonable way of showing that we have an economic interest in reducing warming (by reducing GHG emissions) and that it is in our long term economic interest to do so.
I think it is also important to note that these types of studies is that there are a LOT of assumptions that go into them with large ranges of uncertainty and conclusions with a lot of qualifiers... there is no way to really test this sort of thing it is just an educated guess based on what has happened in recent times.
Personally, I trust the IPCC as the general consensus of the scientific community and think that we should base our policy actions on what they say just like we do with the CBO or other agencies. I have no problem with a price on carbon that is used to directly address this issue rather than being funneled into other pet projects or as a Trojan horse for implementing particular social policies. Since that price does not currently exist I just pay my utility an extra $.013 / kWh to offset whatever my solar array doesn't cover with renewables. I imagine most people have the option to do so...
As far as some of the criticisms are concerned. I am sympathetic to the posters who come on here and point out the hypocrisy involved in climate scientists flying half way around the globe to climate conferences being praised while the media mock rural folks for driving pickup trucks and not getting passports. I think a little less "virtue signaling" and a little more "just doing the right thing" would go a long ways here. I think the social media wars where people take turns posting the latest study that supports their world view with the most hyperbolic statement about it is not particularly productive. The whole "the world is going to end in 12 years" nonsense that was in the news recently showed us as much. That does not, however, justify inaction... you should still do the right thing even if the most vocal proponents of that action may sometimes be hypocrites or incompetent.