Republicans and Climate Change

I often forget to post the link to my MoneyWatch pieces:

Republicans and Climate Change: What should we do about climate change? When Jake Tapper asked that question at the Republican debate Wednesday night, the candidates were united in their view that the economic costs of fighting climate change are much larger than the potential benefits.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, for example, said "Every proposal they (Democrats) put forward will make it harder to do business in America. Harder to create jobs in America." New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had similar sentiments. "We shouldn't be destroying our economy in order to chase some wild left-wing idea that somehow us by ourselves is going to fix the climate," he said. And Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker responded with: "We're going to put people -- manufacturing jobs -- this administration is going to put them at risk."

The skepticism among those on the political right about the benefits of addressing climate change could be at least partly based on the apparent pause in global warming from 1998-2013. But according to work from a group of researchers at Stanford University, that "hiatus" is a statistical artifact. The climb in temperatures hasn't paused at all.

Given that, and the voluminous scientific evidence indicating that global warming is a substantial threat, it's important to understand the extent to which climate change will affect the economy. Will the loss to GDP be large (so that the benefits of abatement are also large)? Will the impacts be equally distributed across geographic regions? Is it possible that some regions will actually benefit from global warming? ...