Jay Inslee won’t let facts get in the way of his extreme environmental agenda. Rather, our “green” governor will go out of his way to find “facts” that justify his exaggerated claims—even if those “facts” are not, well, facts.
On April 29th, Inslee announced his plan to reduce carbon emissions via Executive Order. He referred to “the looming threat of climate change to Washington State” as justification. According to Inslee, the “facts” that supported his dire prediction of our state’s future could be found in a study conducted by the University of Oregon. Citing the study Inslee claimed,
“WHEREAS, studies conducted by the University of Oregon found that the effects of climate change on water supplies, public health, coastal and storm damage, wildfires, and other impacts, will cost Washington almost $10 billion per year after 2020, unless we take additional actions to mitigate these effects.”
The $10 billion cost projection to Washington State comes from the University of Oregon’s 2010 update to a 2009 study. In the 2009 version, researchers estimated a cost of $3.8 billion in 2020. The dramatic cost jump is attributed to “the inclusion of one new category, “Lost natural water storage,” which the authors estimate will cost $7.1 billion alone.”
Unfortunately for Inslee, the University of Oregon’s study is not just wrong, it’s also not up-to-date — it depends on data that was then five years old. And, making matters worse, it relied on flawed interpretations of that outdated data.
If Inslee cared to examine the latest leading research on climate change, he would have referred to data from “the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the source many on the left call the ‘climate consensus.’” But, of course, the problem with the U.N.’s data is that it does not support Inslee’s outlandish, exaggerated claims. Indeed, it “contradicts the University of Oregon study’s extreme climate projections.”
You can read more on how the University of Oregon’s study uses outdated temperature projections and manipulates data on human health effects in the Washington Policy Center’s latest policy note.
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