Chapter 8 - Costing Climate Change (cont.) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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’s Murray-Darling Basin and of declining yields of major cereals. Both are readily rebutted.

 

The first stemmed from a politicisation of the process that interpreted drought, the pattern of which is well understood by Australia’s more careful scientists, with a permanent 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 compiled greater losses than the IPCC from climate change as part of its narrative. 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 farm output and the nation’s major irrigation area. According to Garnaut, half of the present day production in the basin would be lost by 2050 and by the end of the century it would no longer support irrigated agriculture. Such projections are total fantasies.

 

There is no empirical evidence of the Murray Darling turning into the barren region that Garnaut projects. Rainfall measured by Jennifer Marohasy appears in Figure 1.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: K. Stewart, “IPCC Dud Rainfall Predictions for the Murray-Darling Basin,” KensKingdom, 4 April 2014, accessed 17 July 2014, http:// kenskingdom.wordpress.com/ 2014/ 04/ 04/ ipcc-dudrainfall-predictions-for-the-murray-darling-basin/ .