Climate change is real, but its effects will not be catastrophic, the Manhattan Institute said in a report Thursday. “Analyses consistently show that the costs of climate change are real but manageable. For instance, the prosperity that the world might achieve in 2100 without climate change may instead be delayed until 2102,” the report says.
The report finds that the “Obama administration’s long-run projection for the cost of climate change is less than one-tenth of one point of economic growth per year,” and that the impact of climate change on sea-level rise, ecosystem destruction, and geopolitical instability “are likewise substantial but not catastrophic.”
“Politicians and activists are especially misleading when they assert a ‘scientific consensus’ for their predictions of damage. Widespread agreement—and, most infamously, the ‘97% consensus’—extends only to the more mundane assertions that climate change is occurring and that human activity is at least partially responsible,” the report concludes.
The report takes into consideration data and analyses presented in the most recent assessment report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon estimate, the U.S. Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review, and the United Kingdom’s “Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.”
