Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 1: Estimates of welfare loss due to climate change
Source: D. Arent and R. S. J. Tol, “Chapter 11: Key Economic Sectors and Services,” Working Group II contribution to
the Fifth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, IPCC (Draft, 2014),
accessed 17 July 2014,
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-Chap10_FGDall.pdf
,
74. Table 10-3.
In addition, some of the outcomes that the IPCC is projecting are highly dubious. In
the IPCC's
Fifth Assessment Report
, there are allegations of desertification of south east
Australia'sMurray-DarlingBasinandofdecliningyieldsofmajorcereals.Botharereadily
rebutted.
The first stemmed from a politicisation of the process that interpreted drought, the
patternofwhichiswellunderstoodbyAustralia'smorecarefulscientists,withapermanent
change. The drought has broken and the alarmist scientists promoting the theory have been
made to look foolish.
The drought costs estimated by the IPCC owe much to the Garnaut report, which
compiledgreaterlossesthantheIPCCfromclimate changeaspartofitsnarrative.Garnaut
put Australia's costs from a 5°C warming by the end of the century at eight per cent of
GDP. His report put losses from agriculture at twenty per cent of the total and those losses
were predominantly in the Murray-Darling Basin, home to over one-third of Australian
farmoutputandthenation'smajorirrigationarea.AccordingtoGarnaut,halfofthepresent