
GAO: Climate change already costing US billions in losses - ghouse
https://apnews.com/a40f2858a11b4cd5b2fac9f2556bd1f1
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just2n
Report summary: we spent over $350 B in the last 10 years on disaster
recovery, we expect that to continue to be very expensive in the future. They
expect the cost by 2055 to be consistently $35 B / yr, though it appears this
is mostly just a guess, and at best "really bad weather periods are expensive"
which is obvious.

Article: mostly just attacking Trump's administration, entirely non-
constructive.

I don't understand why this is on HN.

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creaghpatr
That's one half of the story. We need to know how many billions in losses are
cost as a result of climate-related regulations. And economically, how much
money is 'saved' due to those regulations.

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fulafel
It's hard to model the dollar cost ("all of them"?) of runaway climate change,
or of individual actions that are necessary but insufficient to avert it.

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creaghpatr
Ideally we would want an accurate trajectory of forecasted change to map the
cost/savings, but the trajectory keeps getting readjusted and the cost/savings
is fairly subjective, so modeling this is pretty much fruitless.

Cost fails to account for economic development as a result of the hurricanes
and subtract that from economic damage.

Savings measurement requires accounting for theoretical scenarios which by
nature are malleable.

Or you could just assume we're all gonna die and no actions will be
sufficient, then we can all just stop working on climate change and save some
extra dollars for the ride out.

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fishcolorbrick
_Cost fails to account for economic development as a result of the hurricanes
and subtract that from economic damage._

Letting things break so that money will be spent replacing them is not
'economic development' [0].

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window)

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dogruck
This article is illogical. It simultaneously calls the report "non-partisan"
while also pointing out that the current administration disagrees with it.

Furthermore, it gives the impression that the cost of every natural disaster
is being associated with climate change.

Lastly, I do not see any mention of what it would cost to implement so-called
climate change prevention strategies. For that, they would have to acknowledge
that this is a global issue.

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aidenn0
Non-partisan doesn't mean nobody disagrees with it.

If well established practices and fact are disputed by one party, that doesn't
make it objective to abandon them. If non-partisan means splitting the
difference between the major parties, then there would be an incentive for
each party to tack as far away from center in order to sway the GAO.

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dogruck
Nonpartisan means not associated with a political party.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisanism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisanism)

If the entire Trump administration disagrees with it, I think it it's fair to
say that his political party is not on board.

The article/report is leveraging one Republican (moderate Susan Collins) to
label it as nonpartisan.

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unethical_ban
If the Trump EPA says the sun appears blue to everyone, then is it a partisan
issue to say they're incorrect?

Partisan means pushing a political agenda based on ideology or party. NOT that
a particular party agrees or disagrees with them.

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dogruck
You're using the straw man argument, which is vacuous. You are also ignoring
the correct definition of nonpartisan, which I linked above.

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aidenn0
Not much of a straw man, since we are nearly certain about the fact that mean
temperatures are rising as we are about the color of the sun.

Whether or not the changing climate is anthropogenic is somewhat less certain,
(and more politically contentious), but we ought to be able to discuss the
effects of these absent the cause without calling a report partisan.

