Trump Says He Doesn't Believe Government Climate Report Finding in a New Low (apnews.com)

President Donald Trump on Monday rejected a central conclusion of a dire report on the economic costs of climate change released by his own administration. Associated Press reports: But economists said the National Climate Assessment's warning of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in global warming costs is pretty much on the money. Just look at last year with Hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma, they said. Those three 2017 storms caused at least $265 billion in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The climate report, quietly unveiled Friday, warned that natural disasters are worsening in the United States because of global warming. It said warming-charged extremes "have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration." The report noted the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015.

"The potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century," the report said. It added that if emissions of heat-trapping gases continue at current levels, labor costs in outdoor industries during heat waves could cost $155 billion in lost wages per year by 2090. The president said he read some of the report and "it's fine" but not the part about the devastating economic impact. "I don't believe it," Trump said, adding that if "every other place on Earth is dirty, that's not so good."

Comments

Re:2nd amendment rights

[OzPeter]

You're asking for the President of the United States to be assassinated. Given that there are a number of constitutional and legal means to dump him, I think that would be a low - although not a new one.

There's Trump quote for every occasion. Back in 2016 he said this about Hillary

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

source (first link on google search)

Re:Growing Expenditures

[Anonymous Coward]

While inflation and density of population both increase the damage done from storms, there is a simple way to figure if the damage is actually going up on a inflation corrected, population density corrected scale.

To be honest, some one else has done most of the work for you.

Homeowners Insurance rates.

Since the number of people in an area, increases the number of insurance plans in that same risk pool, it works out well to a per capita number, and it's pretty easy to correct for inflation... and what you'll find is that homeowners insurance rates are rising much faster than inflation in at risk areas for large scale disasters...

Similar things are happening for auto insurance for things like covering hail damage...

Re:Here's Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

The Tax changes are responsible for GDP growth and great unemployment numbers we have enjoyed over the last few months. The tax "cuts" have predictably caused in increase in tax revenue due to the increase in economic activity, upping employment, raising household incomes and otherwise causing the "poor" to have more money as more of them have jobs who where unemployed and raising the pay of those who already where working.

The tax cuts reduced revenue. Deficits have doubled.

There was an economic benefit due to the fiscal stimulus- but it didn't cause tax receipts to rise by so much that the tax cuts paid for themselves. It never does.

"Voodoo economics" George Bush Snr called it. We are not at the top of the Laffer curve. We are never at the top of the Laffer curve. Tax cuts are a stimulus the economy didn't need and when a recession comes (and it will) the increased defecits will reduce the ability of the government then in power to enact a fiscal stimulus package when it is actually needed.

With unemployment so low there was no need for the tax cuts.

Also the benefits went to the rich. I know it, you know know it everyone knows it.

Re:Of course it's not a new low

[Barsteward]

" The first slave owner in the US and the one who fought a lengthy legal battle through the British colonial courts to make slavery legal was a black tobacco farmer named Anthony Johnson."

Not quite correct. He was not the first slave owner in the US but he was one of the first people in Virginia to have his right to own a slave legally recognised. Snopes and Wikipedia seem to be on the same page with this explanation.
"Anthony Johnson was not the first slave owner in American history, but he was, according to historians, among the first to have his lifetime ownership of a servant legally sanctioned by a court. A former indentured servant himself, Anthony Johnson was a “free negro” who owned a 250-acre farm in Virginia during the 1650s, with five indentured servants under contract to him. One of them, a black man named John Casor, claimed that his term of service had expired years earlier and Johnson was holding him illegally. In 1654, a civil court found that Johnson in fact owned Casor’s services for life, an outcome historian R Halliburton Jr. calls “one of the first known legal sanctions of slavery — other than as a punishment for crime.”"