How Faulty Assumptions in Climate Predictions Could Mean Big Costs for Americans
Family incomes will take a severe hit and household electricity prices will jump rapidly if policymakers use the “social cost of carbon” to justify new environmental regulations, a Heritage Foundation statistician warned during a climate change conference in Washington.
Since computer climate models are grounded in assumptions about the impact of carbon dioxide emissions, the results “can be all over the map,” Kevin Dayaratna said at the Heartland Institute’s conference.
These results then can be “rigged by policymakers” to achieve their desired results, Dayaratna said during his presentation.
The Heartland Institute is a libertarian, free-market think tank based in Illinois. Its 13th International Conference on Climate Change was held July 25 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
Dayaratna, a senior statistician and research programmer at The Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, was part of a panel discussion on “Energy and Climate Economics” that probed the costs of the Green New Deal and the benefits of fossil fuels.
The statistical models used by the Obama administration to set regulatory policy are flawed because they are highly prone to user manipulation, Dayaratna told conferees.
In fact, only one of the three models in use during the Obama years considered …read more