Dr. Steven Chu, President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee to be Secretary of Energy, enjoyed a collegial confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources today. In two hours, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist answered questions on energy policy and regional issues of concern to the senators on the panel. Several senators, both Democrat and Republican, reaffirmed their allegiance to the continued health of the coal industry, challenging Chu’s previous statement that “coal is my wost nightmare.” Responding to a question by Sen. Jim Sessions (R-AL) on the future of nuclear power, Chu indicated that he doesn’t believe the problems of nuclear waste and global warming should stall the construction of new power plants:

The recycling issue is something that we don’t need a solution today or even ten years from today. We have enough fuel. I think we have to figure out a way to store that spent fuel safely, which is another critical issue in this, and figure out a plan for long term disposition. Having said all of that, it doesn’t mean that you stop everything today. It’s very much like coal. We will be building some coal plants. One doesn’t have a hard moratorium on something like that while we search for a way to capture carbon and store it safely. It’s very analogous in my mind.

Chu’s opposition to a coal moratorium puts him in opposition to the likes of Vice President Al Gore and NASA scientist James Hansen, who believe “the United States must begin a sustained effort to exploit new energy sources and phase out unfettered burning of finite fossil fuels, starting with a moratorium on the construction of coal-burning power plants if they lack systems for capturing and burying carbon dioxide.”

Like Hansen and Gore, Chu has called for a rapid, global effort to dramatically reduce global warming emissions. He began his opening statement by saying:

Climate change is a growing and pressing problem. It is now clear that if we continue our current path we run the risk of dramatic, disruptive changes to our climate in the lifetimes of our children and our grandchildren.

Chu indicated that he believes the more productive focus for the United States government than a coal moratorium is in a heavy emphasis on energy efficiency and conservation, with a commitment to limiting energy demand. He reaffirmed his support for a policy portfolio that includes a federal renewable electricity standard, a low-carbon fuels standard, and a carbon cap-and-trade system instead. The Center for American Progress supports an emissions performance standard to require carbon capture and sequestration at all new coal plants.

“Study Shows Global Warming Will Not Hurt U.S. Economy” — That’s the Heritage Foundation touting a new study by economists from MIT and the National Bureau of Economic Review (NBER).

This study, “Climate Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century” — wildly mistitled and deeply flawed, as we will see — is yet another value-subtracting contribution by the economics profession to climate policy (see Part 2: Robert Mendelsohn says global warming is “a good thing for Canada”).

What makes the paper especially noteworthy, however, is not merely the credentials of the authors, but that they thank such climate economist luminaries as William Nordhaus and Richard Tol for “helpful comments and suggestions.” The only helpful comment and suggestion I can think of for this paper is “Burn the damn thing and start over from scratch.”

Heritage quotes the study:

Our main results show large, negative effects of higher temperatures on growth, but only in poor countries. In poorer countries, we estimate that a 1?C rise [sic -- the Heritage folks haven't mastered the —¦ symbol] in temperature in a given year reduced economic growth in that year by about 1.1 percentage points. In rich countries, changes in temperature had no discernable effect on growth. Changes in precipitation had no substantial effects on growth in either poor or rich countries. We find broadly consistent results across a wide range of alternative specifications.

Heritage then quotes a commentary on the study by right-wing blogger for U.S. News & World Report James Pethokoukis, “Sorry, Climate Change Wouldn’t Hurt America’s Economy.” Pethokoukis also quotes from the study:

Despite these large, negative effects for poor countries, we find very little impact of long-run climate change on world GDP. This result follows from (a) the absence of estimated temperature effects in rich countries and (b) the fact that rich countries make up the bulk of world GDP. Moreover, if rich countries continue to grow at historical rates, their share of world GDP becomes more pronounced by 2099, so even a total collapse of output in poor countries has a relatively small impact on total world output.

[If these excerpts suggest to you that the study authors and the economist commenters are victims of some sort of collective mass hysteria, then you are a getting (a little) ahead of me ... but the fact that thoroughly-debunked denier Ross McKitrick is a commenter on this paper certainly suggests this entire effort is indefensible.]

Pethokoukis himself then offers a conclusion that, though amazing, is not utterly ridiculous given a narrow misreading of this absurdly narrow, easily-misread study:

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