Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

The science is certainly at too poor a level to make any reasonable response.

All we know is that the CO2 levels are increasing and this is likely to be caused by fossil fuel burning. We also know that we are in an interglacial in any event and sometime in the near future (thousands of years) the planet would be experiencing cooling and expansion of the ice sheets without the impact of anthropogenic warming. We may anyways.

It worth a review of William Cline's paper at the Copenhagen Consensus website. This site also ranks the global challenges which we face according to the cost and benefit of addressing them. Mitigating Climate Change ranked 15, 16 and 17 out of 17 possible actions.

Re: other environmental problems.

The ozone layer is still shrinking. The consequences of a severe shrinkage would be far more severe. Very little press on this topic, not nearly as much drum-beating as with global warming.

Or am I missing something?

We need fusion power, NOW.

The problem with global warming is that it is global warming as a side effect of energy production. Thus we need to invest HEAVILY in non-CO2 burning energy, which means nuclear power plants, ideally fusion power.

Say, a $10B/year tax on fossil fuels to pay for this...

Brad,
To the best of my knowledge, it's true that there's no rush to stop CO2 production immediately, and it's certainly also true that it's in no way fair to demand that everyone lock into a situation where they all use less energy and emit less greenhouse gases than us.

But, having recognized a problem, it really is important to start working on a solution -- I don't think you can just decide to put it off for a century. We don't have a right to say that China can't use more energy, but we can start working on more efficient, less harmful methods of energy use and production; start applying the brakes, get the second derivative going in our direction. Hell, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if we somehow managed to set up a worldwide greenhouse emission market now that gently encouraged efficiency. We'd thank ourselves in the future.

I think it's also important to note that we *can't* quickly affect the warming situation, not only because of the massive amount of economic changes that would take, but also because of the decades-long timescales involved in temperature equilibration. According to James Hansen (http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh3.html), "the Earth is now out of balance by about 0.5 to 1 W/m2, i.e., there is that much more solar radiation being absorbed by Earth than heat being emitted to space. One implication of this imbalance is that, even if atmospheric composition does not change further, the Earth's surface will eventually warm another 0.4–0.7 °C. " -- this is a reason to start acting now, and to not wait until we start (pardon the pun) feeling the burn.

I imagine there are going to be many posts disputing the importance of climate change. To the doubters, and those who claim the science is too poor, I strongly recommend reading the IPCC's 1998 report on climate change. This was, for those that don't know, the largest scientific undertaking in history. Over 2,000 scientists, from 100 countries, and perhaps the most rigorous peer-reviewed paper in history, came to the clear conclusion that climate change is strongly correlated to human activities.

Also, the reason, I believe, that many climate scientists are so interested in preventing the increase of CO2 emissions is because of the many potential problems related to it.

For instance, the Southern hemisphere is likely to be affected more than the Northern one. The Southern hempisphere, also, is considerably warmer and poorer. If there's a two degree Celcius rise in the average global temperature, this is likely to result in lower crop yields, which could either lower the amount of food available or cause mass famines. If famines are caused, this is likely to lead to waves of people trying to leave their countries. Also, another example, a small degree difference in the rise of global temperatures is going to result in many species leaving their traditional homes and travelling to more hospitable climates. These species, then, are going to have to travel over urban areas and farms. The likely result is going to be mass extinctions.

Regarding ozone depletion, which is often cited as a more serious problem. This is nonsense. Ozone depletion is corrected by a cheap fix, which has already been implemented.

Aaaagh! Nooo! This againnnnn!

A more coherent comment, after I go eat sometime; I skipped lunch, with unpleasant results for my ability to deal with negativity. Meantime, I leave you with the IPCC's *Impacts: Summary for Policymakers*: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg2/005.htm

Let me briefly point out, too, that it takes very little work to find that there are no credible scientific skeptics left; the doubters are either not climatologists, or thoughoutly marginal and biased. It takes only a little more work to find out that the IPCC has come to represent the scientific consensus on this matter.

To Ed Finnerty:

(1) Current estimates from the atmospheric science community are that Earth's CO2 levels are now the highest they've been since the Mesozoic. We really have thrown something entirely new and unprecedented into the ecosystm, by the simple technique of burning the planet's supply of fossil fuels at millions of times the rate at which it originally accumulated.

(2) The average temperature change predicted by the IPCC is as large as the temperature shift in the other direction that accompanied the last Ice Age. It is nonsense to say that there won't be enormous consequences from that -- and the evidence, so far, is that most of them will be bad for humanity. (Last week's "Nature" featured a study concluding that every 1 deg C rise in temperature reduces the yield of rice plants by 10%.)

(3) This shift, if it occurs, will be vastly more rapid than the temperature drop that accompanied the Ice Age. And of course it would be vastly simpler for humanity to pump more CO2 into the air to counter any future Ice Age than it is to remove CO2 from the air to counter any future warming wave (man-made or natural) -- in the case of excessive global cooling, you just set fire to more plants.

(4) The one mechanism any global-warming skeptic has been able to conceive of yet that could counter the greenhouse effects of a CO2 increase is the negative-feedback cloud effect beloved of MIT's Richard Lindzen, in which global warming (for complex reasons that we don't really understand) supposedly increases the ratio of cooling cumulus clouds to those cirrus clouds that further warm the planet. His evidence for this consists almost entirely of his statistical interpretation of data about clouds over the west tropical Pacific obtained from one Japanese weather satellite -- data which some other meteorologists who have looked at it are skeptical indicates anything statistically meaningful. (Having looked at one graph of the actual data, I'm inclined to agree.)

(5) The moral: we absolutely unquestionably need to be spending one hell of a lot more -- right now --both on technical research to try and nail down the global-warming question as fast as possible, and on research on new energy-production and conservation technologies that could reduce our output of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (the latter may be far easier to reduce without impoverishing mankind) or even pull CO2 back out of the air for an economically acceptable price. There is no excuse whatsoever for sticking our heads in the sand where these initial measures are concerned. We had damn well better pray that we won't have to do a lot more; but if the worst-case scenarios turn out to be correct we will very soon have to do a hell of a lot more -- and as quickly as possible.

(Footnote: yesterday NASA launched "Aura", a $750 million satellite which is the first member of the "A Train" -- an extraordinary parade of six US, French and Canadian satellites planned for launch over the next few years which will be put into the same orbit only a few dozen km behind each other to try and nail down the question once and for all by examining the same spot on Earth's surface almost simultaneously with a whole army of instruments. This armada, by itself, should be able to come up with a firm answer as to whether Lindzen's hoped-for natural deus ex machina really exists.)

Clearly the argument that there is something unfair about calling for reductions in the western industrialized world while allowing the developing world to increase emissions is morally bankrupt.

I think your perceptions about this relate to the personal relationship you have to the natural world. Personally, I find the argument that there will be winners as well as losers regarding climate change to be fundamentally immoral. But that's just me. I find it immoral because even if you can say that you prefer the new climate in a particular area, the change will involve the destruction of entire ecosystems. Things that can never be replaced even if there isn't a way to place a monetary value on them.

Regarding the cost of doing something, I understand it exists, but I think it is drastically over-stated. First I'm with the depletionists regarding petroleum. I don't think there is enough of it to generate the level of emissions in the worst case scenarios. And I think we are already seeing the end of ever increasing petroleum consumption. The real challenge is how we deal with the end of the oil age. If we find non carbon burning alternatives we will avoid the worst of the problem and prosper. If we turn from petroleum, to coal, we are screwed.

Since we need to develop these alternatives to petroleum, something that is going to be disruptive in any event, we should strive to make those alternatives a solution to climate change as well. I don't believe that these two issues can be contemplated individually.

Its not just the level of C02 that is at issue, its the rate of change. Sure there have been C02 levels as high, but there has never been anything like the current rate of change.

Global warming is really a misnomer, the issue is not really the temperature, its the whole range of possible instabilities as systems are pushed way beyond their normal limits. Nobody can tell you for sure whether the result of global warming is going to be Europe getting hotter or Europe suddenly being plunged into a mini ice-age if the melting of the arctic icecap causes large amounts of ice cold fresh water to be introduced into the circulation system of the Atlantic, possibly stopping the gulf stream.

There is legitimate scientific debate and there is deciding to ignore any fact that is inconvenient. We have seen this time and again from the GOP and in particular the Bush administration. If people will believe that lower taxes raises income despite years of empirical proof to the contrary their ideas on global warming, invasion of Iraq, saving social security etc. are going to be equally derranged.

Is there some reason that China and India could not industrialize using sustainable technologies and thereby get a jump on the rest of the world? Surely this is the most economically advantageous course? Because the alternative is for them to build an unsustainable infrastructure and then take it all apart, like we are going to have to do in Europe and North America. They have the chance to get the jump on us, and I hope they take it.

A century of current levels of C02 emissions is very risky, for reasons the IPCC spells out: with continuing emissions there is a greater risk of what the IPCC calls "Large-Scale Singular Events"--climate disasters. See http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg2/052.htm#725, and follow the links. In the first world, it would probably be wiser to start a crash program aimed at reducing emissions right now.

"the issue is...the whole range of possible instabilities as systems are pushed way beyond their normal limits."

For your friends and neighbors who refuse to think about it, give them Timescape by Gregory Benford.

What's funny about all this is how the transparency today will have personal consequences tomorrow - the people who persist in publicly hiding their heads in the sand on global warming are going to face some pretty tough questions from their children and grandchildren in the years to come, when the latter find them on Google - "hey Pops, how come all the climate scientists could see this coming but you were so slow to figure it out? Were you oblivious, or did you just _really_ want that Ford Excursion?"

I would not want to be in their shoes.

Perhaps Brad might be interested to look at pictures of what, say, Bangladesh would look like if sea levels went up two meters.

I also want to reiterate the point that there is almost no scientific doubt that global warming is real. Unfortunately, if all you do is get your information from the internet, you wouldn't know that. I've been lucky enough to see (on Usenet, actually) an actual paleoclimatologist debate anti-global warming people which has helped me form my opinion on the subject. I also knew a few climatologists in grad school.

What we really need is a Talk.Origins site (http://www.talkorigins.org) for global warming. That way, when people start talking about satellite measurements, the urban heat island effect and whatnot, I could easily find the references to the refutations of those ideas. (And, yes, I mention these preemptively because that have been refuted in the literature.)

As for
-----
That global warming is likely to bring not only drawbacks but also benefits. Some parts of the Earth will almost certainly be better off for a rise in global temperatures, and it simply dishonest to pretend that this won't be the case. We need to get a clear understanding of who the primary beneficiaries are likely to be, how big their gains might be, and then somehow weigh that against the losses of others.
-----
it's pretty clear what the answer to that is, at least in broad outline. Rich countries will be able to adapt. Poor countries won't.

All the items that Abiola Lapite and Brad seem to think are somehow shocking things that no one interested in global warming has considered are, in fact, old hat, if you bother to discuss things with people who aren't whacked out neo-luddite environmentalists.

Let me also point out that, in addition to the IPCC report, the NAS has released reports on the subject, in particular (http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10139.html?onpi_webextra6) and others at (http://www.nap.edu/collections/global_warming/index.html).

It would be interesting to know what the “deniers of global warming” DON'T understand about any OTHER complex system with which they are frequently in contact. What do they say about predicting the health of their immune systems, for example, or the varying species populations in their local wildlife preserve, or the future of our politics or culture?

Why do they suppose it is impossible to make a good guess at what will happen in the future, even though it is not exactly predictable? And why do they insist that more precise results must be given in climate, when no other complex system so yields its secrets? --These attitudes aren’t even SCIENTIFIC.

You go on induction and preponderance of evidence, unless or until you can make it hypothetico-deductive. That is actually how you conduct your life every day. In particular, you don’t cause too much excitation--unless you are willing to live with crazier gyrations. (Most math and computer modeling of complex systems of any kind, by the way, show nonlinear oscillations and discontinuties--all unpredictable.)

The people who deny the likelihood of global warming have two separate failures: (1) They have an incomplete understanding of general science thinking. In particular, they don’t understand induction and abduction. They also appear to be entirely ignorant of the processes described in all of the sciences that touch upon general systems. (2) They are unobservant of all the basic circumstances underlying the rest of their lives. There appears to be a subset of these who specifically respond to emotional changes by ignoring the signals of gyration, and donning more armor. But this would be for the sober inquiry of competent psychologists.

It is interesting that we keep being told that the public needs to see all the evidence, etc., and know the costs (because we sure can predict all those!) in order to decide, decide, decide--when in fact the public is quite aware, continues to input new facts, and HAS decided. 70 to 80% of us think that global warming is likely to send us all over a cliff. (But you won’t have to wear a sweater.)

And never dismiss the reverence for nature, that is, for something YOU CANNOT CREATE, as a “mere romantic picture”. Then you WILL be a cheesy, fatuous liberal, or an ignorant, arrogant conservative.

"Some parts of the Earth will almost certainly be better off for a rise in global temperatures, and it simply dishonest to pretend that this won't be the case. We need to get a clear understanding of who the primary beneficiaries are likely to be, how big their gains might be, and then somehow weigh that against the losses of others."

I think this is Lapite's most frightening statement (though it has a lot of competition.) It betrays an extremely simplistic conception of what global warming is. "Well, we just figure out which places are going to be unpleasantly warm and which will be threatened by higher sea levels, and compensate them."

Average temperature and melting ice caps are symptoms of global warming, not the central fact. The fundamental fact of global warming is not "it's a few degrees warmer," it's more energy in the atmosphere. That means more severe hurricanes and thyphoons, more flooding, etc. The effects are chaotic and it's extremely difficult if not impossible to predict where they will be felt.

Advocating doing nothing to mitigate global warming and assuming it will be less expensive to just compensate the people we predict will be affected is comparable to stubbornly staying in your beachfront house as the hurricane rolls in (perhaps appropriate for a libertarian...) Yeah, if you're lucky, you *might* come through fine, but for most people it'll be better to take action, and especially to take action sooner, since it's a lot easier to drive out before you know how bad it's going to get than after the 90 mph winds have started and the highway is flooded.

"Why do they suppose it is impossible to make a good guess at what will happen in the future, even though it is not exactly predictable? And why do they insist that more precise results must be given in climate, when no other complex system so yields its secrets? --These attitudes aren’t even SCIENTIFIC."

Stanford (a pretty good school, right?) had oil experts and computer model makers predict the price of oil in 1998 way back in the mid 1980s. So the modest goal was to predict the price about 15 years into the future. The _lowest_ prediction? over $80/barrel. Where was oil in 1998? Around $10/barrel.

A really good source of info on global warming is Quark Soup(http://www.davidappell.com/). If you go back far enough in the archives, you can find a great deal of information regarding all sorts of GW minutiae. However, the real issue I have with all this talk of benefits of GW is that they will significantly be outweighed by the immediate costs. Last year's heatwave in Europe claimed 19,000-35,000 lives according to different estimates (WHO and Earth-Policy.org respectively), and on top of that, with the melting of the glaciers that cover the Alps, comes a greatly increased risk of avalanche(mudslides), and it turns out many of the charming Alpine villages are built on the fall lines of these avalanches.

Phill has the right of it, the effects of GW are not just uniform warming, but increasingly unpredictable weather. Basically put, differential between hot and cold drive the power of weather; the hotter it becomes, the greater the differential, the more power storms have. And the difference is logorithmic, when you are talking about the power of storms. So you have an increasingly large number of unpredictable events of increasing devastation with an appallingly human cost attached to them, irrespective of the wealth or poverty of the afflicted nations. While there may be some potential future benefits to warming ("Due to Massive Famine, Real Estate Prices more Affordable in Manhattan"), they would most likely be undermined by the increased instability of the weather. Also, any discussion of potential future benefits that ignores (or downplays) current costs is adopting the same false "balance" that makes Fox News such a respected news source in these parts.[/sarcasm]

P.S. The Copenhagen Consensus springs from a group run by Bjorn Lomborg, that peddled junk science to help muddy the waters regarding the scientific validity of GW. The complete and total lack lack of scientific credentials in climatology amongst everyone associated with CC alone should be enough to get them laughed out of any serious discussion on the implications of GW. Although they seem to know quite a lot about economics.

"But I find that--if armed with slides of poor villagers in India or Africa--I can almost always get them to agree that India and Africa should be allowed to emit more greenhouse gases than they do at present, and that in a world of great poverty in which we have to persuade the rich to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, we face very tough problems of balancing off poverty reduction with climate change reduction with political viability."

It seems to me that, if the wealthy nations start curtailing their greenhouse emissions *now*, that will spur development of new technologies that will facilitate the process.

Those new technologies will start out expensive. Over time, they'll likely get cheaper, better, more efficient.

Which will make it easier for developing and industrializing nations to adopt them, even before they're quite "wealthy".

If everyone waits 100 years, then the development and product development won't really start until much later, and all countries will be buying expensive new technologies.

If we start now, in 100 years we may have technology cheap enough that it could even be used by poor countries that are still struggling with industrialization.

Nicholas Weaver wrote: "The problem with global warming is that it is global warming as a side effect of energy production."

That may very well be the solution. Many feel that we are approaching an end to 100+ years of constant growth in the use of fossil fuel for energy. This is a consequence of emerging production limitations for oil, in the near term, followed by natural gas and then coal. This will be the ultimate good news/bad news event.

Best case:

There is no such thing as people generated global warming.

Result:

We don't have to do anything.

Worst case:

There is people generated global warning.

Result:

We should study what that means and think about doing something to control our effects on the global atmospheric system.

Methodology:

Start with the worst of the worst case and try to think about what a zero emissions infrastructure would look like. Zero emissions the way W. Edwards Deming talked about zero defect.,

My suspicion is that we would find a lot of consensus "low hanging fruit" that would go some way towards tweaking the system but perhaps a much longer way towards changing the way we think about industrial policy and environmental quality.

James Hansen has already talked a lot about the most tempting piece of "low-hanging fruit" -- namely, reducing our production of OTHER greenhouse gases (such as methane or soot, with the latter of course actually being an aerosol) -- in order to buy ourselves more time for the much more difficult reduction of CO2. What is clear is that sticking our heads in the sand altogether about the problem is criminally irresponsible. But then, sticking our heads in the sand about the far more urgent problem of nuclear weapons proliferation is far more irresponsible, and that doesn't seem to discourage people from engaging in said head-sticking on a wholesale basis.

As a meteorologist, I'm always amazed at how little people know. Especially the people who quote the IPCC report, as if they're read the whole thing (the scientific portion alone is
hundreds of pages).

The key with global warming is that increased CO2 produces *mild* warming which then increases water vapor/clouds. The
key question is--how much water vapor increases and what is the distribution of cloudiness. These are critical to how much
warming does or does not occur (most of the projected warming
is not directly due to CO2), but unlike CO2 measurements
this is a model-determined result.

Also, keep in mind that all the computer models used for simulations are unable to faithfully simulate the number 1 predictable year-to-year climate signal, El Nino. They all have El Nino-like behavior, but they all get it significantly wrong. Doubling CO2 will have an effect on El Nino, but if the model
has El Nino wrnong, why should we trust the *change* in El
Nino due to global warming?

There is enough uncertainty in the model projections that one could make a case to just wait and see what actually happens. Not the wisest move, perhaps, but to pretend that the science is better than it is just opens the door wide to people like Lapite who want to make a cost-benefit analysis of the greatest scientific experiment (for that is truly what doubling CO2 is, an experiment in what will happen) in the history of mankind.

Indeed Matt. It is a roll of the dice. A tera-forming experiment with uncertain consequences. There are huge uncertainties in the models. Hardly a reason for inaction. The uncertainties scare the shit out of me.

Wow, a meteorologist gives us the 5-day forecast. It's all a moot point, whether we get global warming or not; the end of the oil era will cause much more severe consequences in the near term.

Anna writes: What's funny about all this is how the transparency today will have personal consequences tomorrow - the people who persist in publicly hiding their heads in the sand on global warming are going to face some pretty tough questions from their children and grandchildren in the years to come, when the latter find them on Google - "hey Pops, how come all the climate scientists could see this coming but you were so slow to figure it out?

For me what is funny is the resort to cheap propaganda instead of the argument: You claim you did not know that Communism is SO superior to the Capitalism? You must be either slow or Capitalist pig.

"As a meteorologist, I'm always amazed at how little people know. Especially the people who quote the IPCC report, as if they're read the whole thing"

I'm not quite sure what you are getting at. The basic conclusions are straightforward, and covered in the summaries. The graphs alone, in the summaries of the first section of the *Third Asessment*, tell much of the story; the bulk of the report is detailed butressing and analysis of those conclusions. For the introductory discussion of the accuracy of the models, see http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/024.htm. There is also some discussion of El Nino there.

"There is enough uncertainty in the model projections that one could make a case to just wait and see what actually happens." No, there is *not*. It is possible, if the most favorable predictions come to pass, the problems will be minor. But--you said it yourself--the models are not that accurate. We could get the worst-case predictions, instead. A prudent seacaptain does *not* count on calm seas, nor a prudent ruler on a good harvest.

Redshift: "Well, we just figure out which places are going to be unpleasantly warm and which will be threatened by higher sea levels, and compensate them."

Well, that is not actually what A. Lapite said. Here is: "We need to get a clear understanding of who the primary beneficiaries are likely to be, how big their gains might be, and then somehow weigh that against the losses of others."

Let me interpret this for you: "I gain. You lose. Let me weigh my gain against your loss. OK. Tough luck, buddy."

WHY OH WHY CAN'T WE HAVE MORE ECONOMISTS WHO UNDERSTAND TECHNOLOGY? PART XIX

Why didn't Brad mention the word "technology" next to another word, like, "gains" in his global warming blurb?

Consider:

*Since the 1970s, the cost of renewables has decreased about 50% each decade.

*By 2015, the computer you will type on for $1000 will have roughly the power of the human brain.
(OK, not Delong's brain, but a good one none the less.)

*All those cars in China are being sold using 2000 technology with clean carborators , etc, leap-frogging 50 years of extreme pollution - not that they don't have other pollution problems.

Global warming is a mild concern to try to model better as more advanced technology comes on line. But I'll bet some serious euros that nobody has concerns about global warming beyond 2030.

I'm a member of the "Rolling The Dice Is Too Much For My Nerves" school. The relevant scientific points have all been made above; the increasing variance in the system is the most important one to my mind. Although the idea that global warming might trigger a new ice age within the lifetimes of people now living isn't bad either (the idea isn't accepted science, but was recently advanced by a respected investigator).

If we decide to curb global warming now, we are left with the question of how to simultaneously improve living standards in poor areas. Our host seems to be implicitly assuming that allowing them to greatly increase greenhouse gas emmisions is essential to this, and that there is no chance of a corresponding reduction by rich countries. I wouldn't be surprised if he is right, but I would like to explore other alternatives.

Twenty years ago (when it was still possible to be a good faith denier) I was in a seminar with a member of the Reagan administration. He said that the administration considered global warming (or whatever we were calling it then) a trade issue. And that's still the main crux.

Global warming is unlikely to have really bad effects on the US. We may lose parts of southern Florida; portions of the Gulf coast may become uninhabitable; life in Dallas may become more hellish; life in New Orleans more surreal. Crop zones will shift: individual farmers will suffer (especially logging companies--sell Weyerhauser); but agriculture as a whole won't suffer too badly--a 10-20% decrease in agricultural output won't make a whole lot of difference to the economy as a whole. We in the West have a lot of practice in insulating ourselves from the natural world. Governments can do much to ameliorate (though if the Italian government doesn't stop being an oxymoron, we may lose Venice).

But for much of the developing and third world, global warming will be a disaster. Bangladesh has already been mentioned. But one can't believe that China and India would be less damaged than the US.

The question the Reagan administration guy had was "To what extent should the US impose costs upon itself to prevent damage to other countries?" Particularly if the countries which would be damaged don't impose similar costs upon themselves.

This seems very cold, of course. Realpolitik at its worst. Not necessarily for public consumption. It's much easier to deny the existence of the phenomenon than to admit it's real but you don't care about drowning Bangladeshis.

But Abiola is right. Sooner or later we're going to have to talk about differential impact. There are winners and losers to global warming; some absolute winners (Russia probably) and some relative winners. It isn't an equal opportunity disaster. And as long as we ignore that, nothing will get done.

Bruce - Yes I know that atmospheric CO2 is increasing and there is strong evidence that it is at the highest levels since the end of the last glaciation period (12000 BCE). However there have been periods when it was 10 times higher.

I have read the IPCC TAR and much of the background stuff. It is interesting but far from conclusive. The hockey stick has been shown to be garbage.

I really do encourage everyone to review the Copenhagen Consensus work as it tries to look at all the global challenges and rank them as to the seriousness of the problems and the likely cost effectiveness of the response.

The hockey stick has not been shown to be garbage.

Hope this helps.

Is there something inherently impossible about making a serious effort to develop non-carbon based energy sources and at the same time striving to eliminate poverty and disease in Africa and India? Or is this a false dichotomy?

Is there something inherently inconsistent about making a serious effort to use energy resources more efficiently and at the same time promoting development and literacy in poor countries? Or is this too a false dichotomy?

Does this sentence -
"some parts of the Earth will almost certainly be better off for a rise in global temperatures" -
have any meaning? Who will decide what is better and what is worse? How will they decide?

Is it a priori true that large investments by society to develop clean renewable energy sources is only a cost and that no benefits will flow from these investments?

Are there no costs to the status quo - collecting, transporting, and burning enormous amounts coal and oil and gas? Do we weigh these costs in the balance or do we consider only the benefits of burning fossil fuels and not the costs, and only the costs of developing renewables, and not the benefits?

Is it clear that "we" (or really our great grand children who we are saddling with these and many other problems) will have the option of stopping the build up of greenhouse gases in one century? Or is it possible, as some climate scientists fear, that after some threshold has been crossed, the earth's climate will be propelled into another state, much less agreeable to Homo "Sapiens" and to most of the other living things that we share the world with?

(Final Note: The IPCC's report is a CONSENSUS document. EACH and EVERY one of the hundreds of authors had to agree with ALL the conclusions of the report. The report therefore represents the consensus in what can be said about climate change. Based on this, the report and its recommendations should be taken very seriously.)

So let's go to the basics, then. Here's three figures from the IPCC *Third Assessment*:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/figspm-1.htm
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/figspm-2.htm
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/figspm-4.htm

Is there a coherent explanation that can make them wrong without claiming gross incompetence or malfeasance on the part of the researchers who did the work and edited the *Assessment*? Links to the full analysis are included at those URLs for those of you who are up for some serious study.

"Is it a priori true that large investments by society to develop clean renewable energy sources is only a cost and that no benefits will flow from these investments?"

The US experience with modest investments in research has led to successful ideas and products, many of which, like better home insulation and the compact fluorescent lamp, have become everyday items. One area where I believe improved practices will win out is in building, where these practices save long-run money. It's likely that investors will, in a generation or so, begin to insist on "green" building practices and building operation.

I would really like to see serious money spent on devising and disseminating sustainable technologies and practices for use in the Third World. I think it would work, and, if first world nations handled the dissemination well, would probably go a long way to improving relations between the first and third world.

oh, hey! Does anyone know of an economic analysis of the effects of the US depletion allowances? And can anyone refer me to articles and monographs on ways of including environmental externalities in market prices?

Having at least browsed the conclusions of the Copenhagen Consensus, I would say there are some problems with the Cost-Benefit analyses of climate change. Please note that I am *not* an economist, so corrections are welcome.

1) The economic damage estimates for climate change seem extremely low. The economist Nordhaus once asked a panel of economists and a panel of climate scientists/ecologists to estimate the consequences for GDP of a 6C warming this century. The economists estimated several percent of GDP. The natural scientists made estimates in the 10 - 100% range. As a natural scientist myself I understand their fear: the average global temperature was a mere *5C* colder during the ice ages. Surely we would wish to avoid climate change of a similar magnitude?

2) The issue of discounting in environmental economics, has not, to my knowledge, been adequately resolved. On the one hand, it makes sense representing the opportunity cost of capital. On the other hand it seems to discriminate against future generations, discount potential disasters to zero, and assume the substitutability of ecological services. An OECD report on environment and economics I read advised to discount anyway, but under "sustainability constraints", to avoid getting garbage results. A lot of the burden then falls on getting right the nature of these constraints.

3) Cost-Benefit analyses over enormous timespans need to take into account large physical and economic uncertainties. I don't think they are capable of this yet.

In the end, the IPCC might simply put a red line in the sand, defining "dangerous climate change". The economic problem would then be to avoid this line, in an efficient and equitable manner.

I have to say that environmental economics is a pretty shaky field at best. Some of the methodologies involved in estimating costs and benefits are laughable. Surveys asking people how much they would pay or have to be paid to ensure a certain environmental outcome give wildly different results. How can anyone have confidence in hese humbers? And of course, as AP notes, discounting is a key problem. The concept of intergenerational equity has shallow roots at present.

And so I think one has to operate under the precautionary principle, invest heavily in technological research and take common-sense measures that have been blocked for political reasons.

I want to say one more thing.

I think the hidden trend we are going to be surprised by 10,15, 20 years from now is environmental terrorism. Do we want a system where that is more prevalent? Something to consider.

When I look at slides of poor villagers, I see people who will be screwed even if I flat out *give* them a diesel generator because they can't compete with the First and upper Second world for increasingly scarce fuel.

But gift them solar panels or a windmill, and it really helps.

This is in addition to all the comments above about the actual distribution of climate effects. In fact, I hazard to guess that poorer areas are disproportionately cursed with much tougher climates (compare the numbers of hurricanes hitting the US to the number of typhoons Bangladesh has to endure) and adding energy to the pot will make the poorer places even more deadly than they are.

Before we can even have coherent debates about the proper governmental policy to have regarding complex scientific questions, you need to have leadership which is willing to allow scientific consensus to trump ideology. Even more fundamentally, you need leadership willing to allow facts to influence decision making --and leadership willing to change courses of action based on facts that contradict chosen courses of action. Fail to have that, and the rest is meaningless.

Brad DeLong writes, "They (people worried about global warming) simply have not focused on the possibility that we might want to stop it not now but in one century (after China and India have industrialized)."

Jesse Ausubel has done a lot of work in analyzing the decarburization (decrease in burning of carbon, compared to burning of hydrogen) of economies. His projection, if past trends continue, is that the world will be operating as a hydrogen economy (hydrogen-to-carbon ratio greater than 10 to 1) circa 2070.

See slide 25 of 35 at this site:

http://www.solonline.org/repository/download/slide2.pdf?item_id=460535

"But I find that--if armed with slides of poor villagers in India or Africa--I can almost always get them to agree that India and Africa should be allowed to emit more greenhouse gases than they do at present, and that in a world of great poverty in which we have to persuade the rich to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions,..."

Why do "we" have to "persuade the rich to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions"? Don't "we" have better things to do with our time?

Oops, that should have been "decarbonization," not "decarburization".

Oops, that should have been "decarbonization," not "decarburization".

Although one shouldn't dismiss the Copenhagen "Consensus" recommendations out of hand, they ought to be given the same consideration as the NCAR Consensus--an invited group of atmospheric researchers who made far-ranging recommendations on economic policy.

"Methodology:

Start with the worst of the worst case and try to think about what a zero emissions infrastructure would look like. Zero emissions the way W. Edwards Deming talked about zero defect.,"

Shall we strive for a similar "zero emissions" policy in the food-digestion markets. No shit?

I mean, we could go around putting quotas on how much people are allowed to shit -- which of course penalizes gluttonous fat people while exempting starving impoverished people in Africa, India, China etc. We might even set up shit-trading credits so that fat, high-volume shit producers in developed countries could buy shitting-rights from skinny low-shit-producers in third-world economies. Over time, the fat shitters would learn to consume less, and reduce shit emissions, while the skinner shitters would use their credit to develop better food supplies, and thereby raise shit emissions, to levels comparable to the rich economies.

OR, somebody could be looking into ways to profitably capture shit as a resource and use it for fertilizer. Just as some have proposed iron or phosphorous "doping" in barren ocean regions to promote plankton uptake of CO2, in turn promoting more diverse and richer sea-ecosystems.

Some may have other shitty ideas about what to do about waste emissions like C02. But simply tightening up the sphincters seems to me to be a low probability solution.

Can I just point people who think that "consensus" is a good reason to do something or believe something, at this:
http://www.pivot.net/~jpierce/aliens_cause_global_warming.htm

It might be true, and it might not be, but "consensus" != science. Let's not pretend it is, shall we?

Briefly, let me point out that hydrogen is a medium of energy transport and storage, not an energy "source". Keep in mind that energy cannot be created or destroyed; only its form may be changed, and those changes are, so far as we can tell, irreversible. Fossil fuel is an energy "source" in the sense that it contains energy derived ultimately from ancient sunlight.

If scientific consensus is not scientific truth, what is?

I'm outta this one. If anyone can cite an economic analysis of the effects of the US depletion allowances or refer me to articles and monographs on ways of including environmental externalities in market prices, please write.

"Briefly, let me point out that hydrogen is a medium of energy transport and storage, not an energy 'source'."

Jesse Ausubel and I are both quite aware of that fact. The hydrogen economy would be based on photovoltaics, or fusion, or breeder fission, or something else.

"If scientific consensus is not scientific truth, what is?"

Truth is truth. Consensus does NOT equal truth. (Not that there *is* consensus regarding global warming projections. Except possibly the consensus that the IPCC TAR's projections are nonsense.)

"Briefly, let me point out that hydrogen is a medium of energy transport and storage, not an energy 'source'."

Jesse Ausubel and I are both quite aware of that fact. The hydrogen economy would be based on photovoltaics, or fusion, or breeder fission, or something else.

"If scientific consensus is not scientific truth, what is?"

Truth is truth. Consensus does NOT equal truth. (Not that there *is* consensus regarding global warming projections. Except possibly the consensus that the IPCC TAR's projections are nonsense.)

Brad Says: "... global-warming fearers...think that we have to stop global warming sometime--a temperature rise of even 3F per century cannot be sustained for very many centuries, and even the locations that gain from one century of global warming are likely to lose from three. They simply have not focused on the possibility that we might want to stop it not now but in one century (after China and India have industrialized)."

I ask: Brad, have you and other Cornucopian-thinking economists, considered the possibility that we may not have a century to "right" the problems caused by human-induced greenhouse gas loading? Equity considerations aside, it does no good to hide behind the argument that some places may indeed be better off than before the warming, since we have little idea what such a warming may portend, who might win, who might lose, etc.

Also, don't forget that we may have to begin to attempt to "right" these problems in the face of massive uncertainties as to the workings of Earth's complex systems, else risk catastrophe. Think: precautionary principle.

Incidentally, and relatedly, I fear that the ever-present Cornucopian thought among economists has led us to a point where we are no longer as fearful as we ought to be about an international financial meltdown in the face of unprecedented debt-loading. Sorry, I couldn't resist the linkage.

In addition, Can we afford (in terms of carbon and other greenhouse-gas loading) to let China and India industrialize even according to current technologies in-play? As I read the literature, there is a case to be made that we in the so-called West may have to give up some of our "goodies" to help the so-called East (and ourselves) develop better technologies as we face the problems of loading up our environmental "sinks." According to some, our American lifestyles, have about exhausted the planet's sink capabilities.

So if someone has to offer up some sacrifice why not us? (Oh, I almost forgot that we arrogant inhabitants of the good not-so-old USA think that we don't have to sacrifice because we are the world's consumers of last resort (hence "to big to be allowed to fail"), have the biggest stockpile of conventional and nuclear weaponry, and have God on our side).

Brad further says, "... I find that--if armed with slides of poor villagers in India or Africa--I can almost always get them to agree that India and Africa should be allowed to emit more greenhouse gases than they do at present, and that in a world of great poverty in which we have to persuade the rich to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, we face very tough problems of balancing off poverty reduction with climate change reduction with political viability."

I say: Yes, keep up the good fight. We are all in this together, and we in the West have taken a Lion's share of the capitalist goodies for far too long. Our day of reckoning may at hand.

These came across the wire today, and I thought I'd add the to the discussion:

On the cost of first-world green building, Neal Pierce:

http://www.postwritersgroup.com/archives/peir0706.htm

Rural solar engineering in India:

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000954.html
(the links don't work right now)

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