The much-leaked report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be released today (this evening our time). As everyone knows, it will conclude that it is very likely (more than 90 per cent) that human activity is the main cause of observed global warming. The IPCC best estimate of the impact of business as usual is an increase of around 3 degrees C relative to preindustrial levels by 2100.
There’s still room for debate over the central estimate, particularly regarding the projections of CO2 emissions. For example, the population growth projections used in the estimate are probably too high. On the other hand, I doubt that some feedback effects like bushfires have been fully taken into account. And the climate models themselves are still being refined. Still, it doesn’t seem likely that the estimates are going to be changed much by another 5 years of data and improved modelling, so we can probably take this estimate as settled for the moment.
In many ways, though, the real interest now is in the tails of the distribution. Most of the attention so far has been focused on the lower tail, representing the possibility that global warming will turn out to be modest or non-existent. Denialist arguments that the whole idea of anthropogenic global warming is wrong have received a lot of attention but have been thoroughly refuted by now. On the other hand, if all the questions now in doubt turned out the right way for us (forcings at the low end of estimates, feedbacks from water vapour and so on less positive, historical trends at the low end of the margin of error) and some factors we haven’t yet considered turned out to reduce warming, we could see lower numbers, small enough to make adaption rather than large-scale mitigation the best response (in hindsight).
But all these arguments are symmetrical. If warming could be slower than the best projections, it could also be faster. According to the ABC, the report says gains of up to 6.3 degrees can’t be ruled out, though this figure is from only one model, and does’t fit well with other data.
Although the probability distribution of possible outcomes is essentially symmetrical, however, this doesn’t mean that we can ignore the tails. This is because the costs of climate change grow much more than linearly with the rate of change. Let’s say, for illustrative purposes, that 3 degrees of warming would impose costs equivalent to a 5 per cent reduction in income. Taking account of a small probability (less than 10 per cent) that warming will be very modest, so that costs are zero, doesn’t change the analysis much. By contrast, 6 degrees of warming would be catastrophic – it’s equal to the change since the last Ice Age. Even a small probability of 6 degrees of warming (say 5 per cent)** would greatly increase the expected cost of warming. For plausible levels of risk aversion, the expected cost could be as much as 10 per cent of GDP. So the cost of warming is greatly affected by the probability of these extreme events, and this is an issue that is still unresolved.
The general point here has made a number of times already,notably by Tyler Cowen and Brad DeLong . Uncertainty about the impact of climate change strengthens the case for action to mitigate it.
** This number isn’t really crucial to the argument, but the lower the number the greater the relative importance of the low-probability tail events. A lot of published estimates, like those of Nordhaus and Tol are lower than this, but (as noted in the previous posts) these estimates impute trivial costs to the severe ecological damage that would inevitably arise with 3 degrees of warming.
John Quiggin 
Your second paragraph appears to be missing some words at the end.
Interesting that they say there is still room for doubt that it is anthropogenic. Do you know the source of that doubt or is it, in your opinion, just a fig leaf of compromise?
There has to be a non-zero possibility that the observed increase in temperature is just a chance fluctuation, though I’d put that probability well below 10 per cent.
“More than 90 per cent” is the kind of conservative phrasing you get out of a consensus-based approach. It leaves room both for people who want to say 99.9 per cent and for those who want to back away gracefully from past scepticism and say that the evidence was, until recently, not strong enough to justify the AGW conclusion.
The IPCC has a separate percentage for the chance that it is due to natural factors, which in the AR4 I expect will be 0%-1% (“exceptionally unlikely”). They don’t use certainty (0% or 100%) for anything.
I should add that actually the “very likely” category is 90%-99%, whereas “nearly certain” is 99%-100%.
This gives an estimate of the cost of greenhouse gases in GDP terms.
Are there estimates of how much it would cost to build the infrastructure to produce the same amount of energy as we currently consume but without producing greenhouse gases? I keep searching for these numbers but cannot find them so had to guess my own set. Surely there must be something out there?
A BBC news report cites an article in Science which has suggested that climate measurements are very close to the upper limit of IPCC predictions that were made in 1990. This is the case with temperature, and sea level rise. Unfortunately I havent been able to track down the actual article yet.
It is perhaps easier to calculate climate change costs and abatement costs for a single country (like Australia) than for the world. There is a significant risk of losing the Great Barrier Reef even within a stabilisation range of 500-550 ppm Co2-e. The Barrier Reef is estimated to be worth $5.8 billion per year (mainly in tourism), so this can be thought of as a rough lower bound on the marginal costs of climate change at this stabilisation level. Both the 2002-03 drought and the 2006-07 drought have costed about 0.75% of GDP (which amounts to about $6 billion if my memory serves me correctly).
The Energy Supply Association of Australia recently released a report which suggests that reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 70% of present levels by 2030 would cost about $40 billion more than BAU. This study assumes massive increases in electricity demand, so is not least cost. There will also be costs if greenhouse gas emission reductions also occur outside the stationary energy sector. $40 billion amounts to about $1.7 billion per year for each year until 2030. This figure is based on cost estimates between now and 2030 of different technologies, which would be hard to predict accurately.
It does seem likely that reducing GHG emissions by 30% by 2030 would result in higher costs of climate change than abatement costs. It is therefore in Australia’s interests for the world to have greater reductions in emissions by then.
Kevin Cox: the world emitted 25,162.07 Million Metric Tons of Carbon Dioxide from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels in 2003.
Of that, 2,537.13 Million Metric Tons Carbon Equivalent came from the consumption of coal (IEA).
Nuclear energy could replace all of the latter. The Scitowski report gives data for costing this (Uranium Mining, Processing, and Nuclear Energy).
Thanks Peter for the reference which while not giving the capital cost of energy infrastructure does show that the alternatives are not too expensive.
The Energy Supply Association of Australia referred to above shows a cost of $42 per mwh for Geothermal and a cost of $30 per mwh for existing coal. This is very encouraging and it would indicate that we really have no excuse not to change to zero emissions over the next ten years. If the cost – with existing technologies – is so close then if we can start to change to the alternatives we can do it.
It is possible to envisage both geothermal and solar energy systems producing some stored energy in the form of hydrocarbons produced from CO2, H2O and energy which will burn and reduce the amount of carbon because we will be left with some soot which will not return to the atmosphere so it will have a double benefit.
While we are waiting to bring the major generators like geothermals on line we can start the change through solar hot water heating which is a cost effective technology and also make a start by reducing emissions through energy savings.
The issue is how to get the investment going in these technologies and away from fossil fuel burning.
It looks doable and without destroying economies. The technology is there we now need the economists to show how it can be done economically efficiently and the politicians to make it happen.
I realize that this is a tangent, but I was interested in Tim Flannery’s argument that AGW has already resulted in the desertification of the Sahel region which , in turn, caused the conflict in Darfur. At the moment there is, as far as I know, no international law to cover the case of involuntary manslaughter by virtue of being economically developed. What is our (the industrialized world’s) responsibility to the people of Tuvalu, Bangladesh, etc.?
melanie, I can’t answer your question, but you may find of interest a paper done by Alan Dupont and Graeme Pearman on climate change and security. The Stirn Review also suggested that the negative effects of climate change would fall differentially on the poor. Clearly, I think, we have a responsibility to assist.
Kerry O’Brien’s interview with Pearman on the 7.30 Report was interesting and instructive.
Well it’s like this melanie. The jury is apparently now in on GW and logically if we are consistent with James Hardie shareholders and executives, all executives (and workers) in the GG emitting and facilitating industries must immediately cease what they’re doing. That’s the BHPs, Rios, Toyotas, Holdens, Victas, AGLs, etc, etc right down to the uni students working the cash register at the servo. None of them must obfuscate or hide behind the need to put food on the table any longer, just as those nasty folk at JH did all those years. GG kills and there’s no hiding from the facts now. Stop what you are doing and go home immediately all you accessories to murder. Should this happen? Logically and morally yes. Will it happen? Well err no, because suddenly we can all empathise with JH execs and workers.
How do we avoid such hypocrisy in future? We follow the simple rule that whilst ‘we’ via our govts allow the legal production and sale of a product, we don’t retrospectively punish people at law for doing so. But then I told you all that quite some time ago you dopey hypocrites!
Observa, don’t be silly. The generally accepted principle (in our legal system, at least) is that people should pay damages for what they knew they were doing and for negligence (not doing what they knew they should do).
For giggles, the executive summary of the IPCC report can be found here:
Click to access SPM2feb07.pdf
Yes the debate is over but the prescriptions are far from settled. When we stop using the words ‘climate may change’ to ‘climate has changed’ and then ‘probably will change’ to ‘will change’, then finally people may get their heads out of the money bucket and look outside the door.
The climate modelists have done a terrific job, but the unpublished conensus appears to be accelerated change (The Lovelock position)and the elephant in the shop are the unknowns about positive feedback and rapidity. Interesting piece recently on REAL CLIMATE which suggests even a change mechanisim such El-Nino may now be changing in ways unknown.
I and my family have already changed and began the energy use windback including the very costly but necessary decision to dump the current dwelling and build low cost a high energy efficient environmentally sympathetic home using passive cooling and heating techniques, and we are not rich by any stretch. This is where change has to happen, at home right now, starting now, not tommorrow. For all of us as a whole the enormous capital investment into inappropriate infrastructure and energy intensive just on time sytems will probably bring us to our knees anyway. It is now 2007 and the discussion merely continues like there is no tomorrow and has been going on like this for a decade, it is time policy and its implementation actually caught up with the rate of change of the climate!
The Pearman interview on the 7.30 Report was interesting for showing that the displacement of people caused by global warming will have many unplanned effects as people leave areas made uninhabitable to travel to areas that can sustain them. It would be interesting to have some hypotheticals on this consequence.
The destabilisation of the world as mentioned by Melanie would have GDP implications and the cost/benefits of global action on warming equation could be quite different to that based on the assumption of political stability and no large scale migration.
Those countries interested in empire building such as USA, China and Indonesia all have large populations and could invade other nations with greater resources and fewer people to rewrite polical and economic futures.
Observa the jury has been in for quite some time.
Maybe just maybe instead of playing the drama queen and beating our breasts saying we were only feeding our families (not to mention some of us overseas ski trips and building luxury houses)we do the moral thing and to make our lifestyles more sustainable while allowing the developing nations to leapfrog our mistakes.
That is instead of funding astroturfs, censoring science and just plain being recalcitrant.
Is that so melanie. It seems the usual vultures and ambulance chasers concur fully with your analysis
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21163321-1702,00.html
The problem of GG emissions leading to GW is a classic case of epidemiological risk(as distinct from technical/engineering risk), like smoking and asbestos. By the time the slow drip, drip of awareness becomes a dambuster of smug hindsight, millions have absconded with the private benefits, without paying the true social costs. It’s impossible or largely uneconomic to extract that private gain from so many, but that doesn’t stop the newly morally outraged from venting their indignation on soft (cashed up and large) targets. Witch hunting hasn’t changed much over the centuries.
Jill the Dupont/Pearman piece suggested that initial population movements would be within countries rather than to other countries, but this could be highly disruptive and destabilising. I recall them saying that two provinces in western China had been affected in opposite ways – more rain in one and less in the other. This had stimulated population movements of Han Chinese out of the dry province to the wtter Muslim province. The suggestion was that things weren’t going too well.
There was a story on Life Mattersc on the Carteret Islands who are due to evacuate entirely about now. With storm surges the entire islands were being covered by sea water, with only houses and palm trees seen above the waves. When the land appeared again the islanders were entirely dependent on coconuts for food and drink from local sources. No-one looked forward to relocating to Bougainville but they had no choice.
One interesting fact is that while sea level rises are given in terms of global averages there is significant variations geographically. The sea is always on the move.
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“Observa, don’t be silly. The generally accepted principle (in our legal system, at least) is that people should pay damages for what they knew they were doing and for negligence (not doing what they knew they should do.”
“Observa the jury has been in for quite some time.”
Oh dear! You haven’t been working at the servo for some time to put yourself through uni have you melanie? Don’t tell me you’ve actually been driving to work at the servo recently? When will the nightmare of culpability end? Perhaps only when the innocents via the Castros, Jong Ils, Mugabes and Chavezs have had their win in the International Court in the Hague and melanie and I and you all are paying them their just damages. After we’ve all said sorry of course.
Let me note here that those gutless, PC wimps at JH got everything they deserved from the morally outraged, soggy headed, left liberals. With GW on the agenda (and even mobile phones) they had the perfect foil for epidemiological risk and retrospective witch hunting. That and the fact they had ceased asbestos production in 1983, while ALL our govts allowed the sale of asbestos brake pads until Dec 31st 2003(when the those horrid Yanks banned them would you believe lefties?). That coupled with the results of a survey of how many of their shareholders and workers were ever tied to JH prior to 1983, would have been all the ammunition they needed to expose the wanton hypocrisy and stupidity of the usual suspects. I’ll watch with wry interest the same idiocy over GW.
Now that the jury’s in for GG emitters, can they extricate themselves from legal liability with responsible health warnings- eg ‘This Toorak Tractor emitted X tonnes of carbon dioxide in its manufacture and emits Y kgms/km in use. Please do not purchase or run it if these levels exceed your own personal level of GW culpability tolerance as the manufacturer cannot be held liable for the fallout.’
I just cannot see the required greenhouse gas reductions being acheived under the current, essentially voluntary, political mechanisms. There will have to be some sort of non-voluntary component to it. We see time and again the entire mechanism being compromised to bring on board those with the least incentive to participate.
My reading of history is that major changes in political organisation come about at moments of significant and rapid crisis. Nothing else, certainly not slow change, is enough to create substantial political changes. GW in itself is not a rapid crisis.
However GW is likely to lead to quite a number of environmental catastrophes, such as what may be happening in the Sahel at the moment, that do meet that are rapid and significant. I anticipate that as these catastrophes unfold they will produce crisis primarily in the form of refugee flows that completely overwhelm nations and their neighbours countries. As it becomes clear that national governments cannot deal with these problems on their own we will instead increasingly resort to international institutions and solutions. We have already seen this beginning for non-GW catastropes such as the Boxing day tsunami. These multi-national crisis will lead the strengthening of multi-national instutions to deal with them. At some point people will start to realise that it is simpler and less costly to deal with the cause of GW rather than its symptons and these strengthened multi-national institutions will start being directed towards the former as well as the latter.
But all this is a long time away. At least a decade in my view. And it wont’ be enough for poor African countries to be overwhelmed. It is only going to happen when rich industrialised countries start to be affected.
Does the IPCC take a position on the likelihood of a complete runaway greenhouse affect? Lovelock has mentioned that alot of climatologist put the odds of this at something like 1%, which is stunning considering it would essentially be the end of the world.
The IPCC’s FARt is some improvement on its TARt, as it has moderated some of the more dire predictions in the latter. However it continues on its merry way by lying with if not statistics then with graphs. As before, FARt is a polemic, shown by its clever choice of years for its baseline averages depending on time series in question, e.g. temperature and sea level rise.
Like TARt, FARt shamelessly presents standard errors many times larger than the estimate, as here for sea-level rise:
0.03 (+- 0.1) metres per CENTURY for ocean rise
0.03 of a metre sea level rise in 100 years which could turn out to be either a fall of 0.07 or a rise of .13 with equal probability is not really very scary. China’s Great Wall would easily hold such rises at bay if only we had the technology and construction skills to replicate it as and where needed (not to mention Emperor Hadrian, but then both the Chinese and Romans were more advanced than we are)
FARt unlike TARt admits re Antarctic melting that there are “no statistically significant average trends”. Likewise with Diurnal Temperature range – no change since 1979 (pace TARt)
FARt: no trends for tornados etc. But is wrong already with is prediction of warmer hot days and fewer cold nights – eg for the latter Canberra 2007.
FARt’s sea level predictions of 0.18 to 0.59 metres of sea level rise by 2100 are dependent on the scenarios of choice, but they all assume no reductions in emissions even from well known trends in lower emissions per $ of GDP increase… The FARt explicitly states again as did TARt that ALL of its projections are based on SRES scenarios that assume no implementation whatsoever of Kyoto or any other GHG emission reduction efforts, so are in fact worst case scenarios. Ian Castles and David Henderson appear to have been set aside once again.
The FARt Fig. SPM-4 fortunately shows that we in SE Australia have nothing to fear from GW, not so Brisbane, so there is a god! Fig. SPM-5 shows also that the whole of Australia has nothing to fear from climate change before 2029 (the projected increase in temp. of less than 1 is not statistically significant. However Siberians will be glad to hear that they can expect some greater climate benignity by then.
BTW, the sumary for policy makers runs to 21 pages but needed no fewer than 33 “drafting authors” and 18 “draft contributing authors”. Alas, there was a typo, for “draft” read “daft”.
“Let’s say, for illustrative purposes, that 3 degrees of warming would impose costs equivalent to a 10 per cent reduction in income.”
Odd that you didn’t say:
“Let’s say, for illustrative purposes, that 3 degrees of warming would impose costs equivalent to a 1 per cent reduction in income.”
or
“Let’s say, for illustrative purposes, that 3 degrees of warming would impose costs equivalent to a 0.1 per cent reduction in income.”
🙂
If you wanted to use realistic numbers rather than “illustrative” ones, I think Stern and most other economic assessments are closest to the middle of those three, aren’t they?
No I don’t think so James, JQ’s estimate of 10% from 3 degrees sounds like a Stern report median estimate, the Stern range was 5 to 20% of income wasn’t it?
Tim Curtin that stuff you offer like FARts and TARts is just plain hilarious, and “FARt: no trends for tornados etc. But is wrong already with is prediction of warmer hot days and fewer cold nights – eg for the latter Canberra 2007.” will have even the most starched of Qblog readers gasping for air. Unless you were being serious that time? How much maths have you taken in your studies btw?
Actually, James, using a lower number strengthens the point. If the cost of 3 degrees of warming is 1 per cent of income, then even a very small probability of catastrophic warming would dominate the cost estimate. Even with 5 per cent, which is what I feel is about right, the catastrophic cost component is comparable to the contribution of the mean. I’ve edited the post to tighten up on this point.
Well you all want to hope that as the polar caps melt and the ice goes there is not an accompanying shift in the earth’s axis in response to the mass change from north to south! It has happened before, no one around to remember those events, evidence is in the rocks!
John,
If you accept that the cost is reasonably approximated by a quadratic (for which there are good theoretical reasons) then your comment is wrong.
Krusty,
I recommend you read what Stern actually wrote, in particular Fig 6.6. As I said, 1% is a realistic value for 3C warming and John’s value appears to be a gross exaggeration chosen for emotional appeal.
James, if you start with damages of 1 per cent for 3 degrees C and use a quadratic, you get 4 per cent for 6 degrees C, 9 per cent for 9 degrees C and 16 per cent for 12 degrees C. I assume you agree that at least the the last of these figures is absurdly low – warming of 12 degrees would render most of the planet uninhabitable. So, whatever theory you are using to derive this model is wrong, and the error must be close to the range in which you are trying to use it.
The quadratic assumption is most obviously wrong, because it doesn’t allow for a shift from increasing but manageable marginal costs to catastrophic damages. But as I’ve argued at length the 1 per cent number is wrong too, because it’s based on gross undervaluations of species loss.
The fact that the standard cost estimates (including Stern’s) put very low costs on species extinction makes the shift from moderate to catastrophic damage more abrupt – the large direct human impacts (at least the predictable ones) come on at a point when ecosystem impacts are already disastrous.
John,
You are now extrapolating out to silly numbers. Please stop playing duck and weave games – you are usually better than this. Your original post was comparing 3C with 6C, and my comment was obviously valid over this sort of range. Just look at Stern’s graphs that I already referenced, or indeed anyone else’s!
Can I safely assume we can’t leave the solution to the lawyers and the courts then?
James, the whole point of my post was to disagree that the quadratic functional form is valid over the range from 3 to 6 C (that is, that damages from 6 C would be around four times those from 3 C).
My judgement from reading the literature reasonably closely is that anything over 4 C is bound to lead to the complete collapse of large numbers of ecosytems with unpredictable consequences for humans. If you accept that, the range of validity of quadratic estimates is no more than 0-4 C. But if you disagree, I’d be interested to know what range of validity you are willing to defend.
On the impacts, here is what Stern (Table 3.1) says about changes of greater than 5 C (this matches statements from the IPCC) “This level of global temperature rise would be equivalent to the amount of warming that occurred between the last age and today – and is likely to lead to major disruption and large-scale movement of population. Such “socially contingentâ€? effects could be catastrophic, but are currently very hard to capture with current models as temperatures would be so far outside human experience.”
The impacts for species extinction given in the same table are terrible, even for smaller changes. But, unless I’m misreading you, you want to say that this could be modelled as costing around 4 per cent of income, equivalent to a mild recession or a few years of slow productivity growth.
Primarily, I’m saying that is what Stern assumes according to his Fig 6.6. I’m also saying that given your estimate for 3C is roughly 10x the consensus, I find it more plausible to conclude that your estimates for higher values are also exaggerated rather than that high values are even more critical (as per your comment 31).
I don’t look forward to large-scale extinctions (it’s already happening), but I do realise that modern agriculture is already an entirely man-made ecosystem, and reducing emissions is only one of a number of approaches at our disposal for the protection of the natural environment. Assigning large “costs” (based largely on aversion to environmental damage rather than actual direct economic impact) and then scaring people with talk of catastrophe and recession is somewhat underhand IMO. I am quite confident that that many people believe that climate change actually threatens to lower our existing standard of living (eg Bliar’s “disaster in our lifetime”), rather than effectively reducing an average growth rate by one or two tenths of a percentage point (from 2.3 to 2.2% pa or similar, according to Stern).
James, you have things back to front as regards the way I’m talking about recession. I’m pointing out the massive species loss associated with climate change (which as you say is happening already) asserting the value judgement that any reasonable person should regard this as worse than a recession, then using the economic costs of a recession to set a lower bound for the costs of climate change. I’m not trying to scare people with talk of recession – I’m just using it to give a quantitative starting point.
Your use of scare quotes around “costs” and the subsequent statements suggests to me that you don’t think economists should consider such things. I disagree, obviously.
Actually, I said it (species loss) was happening already, but I did not say (and do not think) that climate change is a dominant factor. Rather, I am pretty sure it is almost all due to habitat destruction although I don’t claim specific expertise in this area. Do you not think that the projected A2 population growth would in itself be a greater problem than the associated GHG emissions in terms of overall environmental harm?
I’m very happy for economists to consider things like ecosystem damage. I think they should show their working clearly and make it clear what sort of losses they are talking about, and as I said before I am certain that as things stand the public is substantially misinformed.
TBH I am unhappy about being pushed into what might seem like a sceptic-friendly position. I’d be delighted to see a more environmentally-conscious approach at all levels, with downward pressure on fossil fuel use a significant component of this. I’ll try to write some more positive posts, but frankly the volume of exaggerated science that I see being put forward is something I am very disappointed by and it results in a rather unhealthy atmosphere for research. I’ve been asked to change text in one of my papers specifically to be more politically correct and it recently happened to a friend working in a very different sub-field.
As a rough rule of thumb, if RealClimate doesn’t comment on a newsworthy piece of climate science, it is IMO reasonable to assume is because they are embarrassed by it and don’t know what to say. It took them several months to work out what to say about Stern and they never wrote anything at all about the “frogs being wiped out by climate change” Nature paper which featured on the BBC radio 4 “Overselling climate change” program.
Global warming is happening and it is being caused by human activity.
Global warming has a high probability of being bad for humans.
Human activity has caused it and human activity can prevent it escalating and reverse it.
The question is no longer about the issue but on the appropriate human activity to reverse it in the most efficient manner.
There are lots of human activities we can do to help.
A big one is to replace all energy production that produces green house gases with energy production that does not produce green house gases. That is we need to either replace the existing infrastructure for energy production or modify the existing infrastructure so that it is carbon neutral.
We (the general population) expect economists to come up with the most economically efficient way to achieve things that will help – like replacing or modifying the energy infrastructure. What are the suggestions in this area?
James, I agree that destruction of habitat is the dominant source of species loss, and that so far, climate change has played only a secondary role in this. But in a situation where habitats are already fragmented, climate change will be much worse than if it was occurring in an otherwise undisturbed world. I see it as wiping out most of what we’ve been able to salvage through nature reserves and so on (again, Stern and IPCC support this).
As regards population growth, I agree that realisation of the A2 scenario would be a big problem in itself. But I don’t see that this affects my argument. I support feasible policies that would make A2 less likely, such as making both education and family planning easily available in poor countries, particularly for women. Some progress has been made on this front, but clearly if we allocated 1 or 2 per cent of the income of rich countries to aid we could do a lot better – a point I’ve posted on many times. Similarly, allocating 1 or 2 per cent of our income to stabilising global climate looks like a good deal to me.
Of course, if you buy the Lomborg idea that there is only some fixed sum of money available, and it has to be spent on either aid or climate change, it’s easy enough to draw the conclusion that we should ignore climate change. But (as Lomborg himself admits in an unguarded moment) that’s the reverse of the actual case. Emissions trading schemes will produce transfers from rich to poor countries entirely separate from aid budgets.
On a more general point, I’m not responsible for what Tony Blair says, and I have done my best to make my reasoning clear and to clarify issues that were unclear in Stern. I’d be grateful if you’d respond to my arguments, rather than lumbering me with responsibility for those of others.
My first post on the Stern Review made the point that “the apocalyptic numbers that have dominated early reporting represent the worst-case outcomes for 2100 under business-as-usual policies”. I’ve also been entirely clear that the most important consequences relevant in the next few decades are effects on natural environments, not direct effects on (narrowly-defined) economic activity.
I think James Lovelock has proven himself to be one of the great scientific minds of the 20th century. When his intuition suggests to him in the 21stC, as it does by now, that we are likely to see 8 degrees of warming this century and that we’ve already passed a point of no return, I’ll back his gut instinct over my own. But intuition and instinct are not science so I’d like to know what science he can muster to make his case; failing the production of the scientific case for Lovelock’s “certain climate catastrophe” (let’s call it), I’ll side with the IPCC or at least the scientific consensus in CliSci sub fields. I’d be grateful though if anyone – a Lovelock and catastrophe sceptic such as James or anyone else – could accurately summarise the scientific case that Lovelock may have in mind, or point me to a good such argument somewhere else.
JQ, how narrowly do you need to define economic activity? We apparently already have disastrous consequences for economic activity in the Sahel (admittedly never a huge contributor to global GDP, but important for lotsa people with spin-offs in terms of peace keeping operations, humanitarian operations, possibly costing more GDP than that which was lost) and the internal migrations have already begun – as studies of migration show, forced migrants are far more likely to plunge into a downward spiral than to make good.
John,
I don’t accept the “lump of money” argument (and having not actually read him am willing to accept the word of many others that Lomborg cherry-picks and distorts) but on the other hand economics is precisely about the allocation of scarce resources, and it is not unreasonable to ask how effective various courses of action are in achieving their stated goals. I think I’ve seen it said that Stern’s 1% for mitigation (which many regard as unreasonably low) is 5x the international aid budget (which itself largely seems to end up the in pockets of dictators). If someone claims to be concerned with poverty in the poorest countries, is it really defensible to spend such relatively small sums of money on those who are actually poor right now, and vast sums of money on (possibly) helping the grandchildren (who will in any case be massively richer)? I don’t think that quips like “If you don’t care (much) about future generations, you shouldn’t do anything (much) about global warming” really help the debate.
The fact is, when people push climate change to the front of the agenda, they do effectively push other things back. It dominates public discourse to the almost complete exclusion of other environmental issues. Planting a few windmills in environmentally sensitive areas isn’t going to do anything for subsistence farmers who are chasing the water table down into the ground several more feet per year.
Frankis,
Lovelock is simply making stuff up, it is science fiction (like “Day after Tomorrow”) rather than science. It would be a very generous interpretation to say that he’s taking the extreme limit of all scientific hypotheses and adding them together. I think it is roughly based on the hypothesis of a large methane clathrate release as the ocean warms, but even then the magnitude of resulting climate changes and impacts on society seem implausible.
Here is Realclimate’s post on Lovelock (google cache because the site is down right now):
http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:V65YVcqNh4UJ:www.realclimate.org/index.php%3Fp%3D256+realclimate+lovelock&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1
“John,
I don’t accept the “lump of moneyâ€? argument (and having not actually read him am willing to accept the word of many others that Lomborg cherry-picks and distorts) but on the other hand economics is precisely about the allocation of scarce resources, and it is not unreasonable to ask how effective various courses of action are in achieving their stated goals.”
Agreed, and this is what I’ve been trying to do
“I think I’ve seen it said that Stern’s 1% for mitigation (which many regard as unreasonably low) is 5x the international aid budget (which itself largely seems to end up the in pockets of dictators). If someone claims to be concerned with poverty in the poorest countries, is it really defensible to spend such relatively small sums of money on those who are actually poor right now, and vast sums of money on (possibly) helping the grandchildren (who will in any case be massively richer)?”
This seems to be a restatement of the lump of money argument, which you just said you don’t accept. The 5x number (implying 0.2 per cent for aid) is just about right for the US, but otherwise too low. And your aside about dictators only strengthens my point about emissions trading. To the extent that it provides market-based transfers to poor countries it circumvents some of the problems (real or perceived) that have made official development aid a very hard sell in political terms.
“The fact is, when people push climate change to the front of the agenda, they do effectively push other things back. It dominates public discourse to the almost complete exclusion of other environmental issues.”
This is certainly not the case in Australia where water issues are at least as prominent (of course the two are connected). And, unless we deal with climate change, there doesn’t seem to be much point in a lot of the environmental preservation actions we are taking at present.
On Lovelock, I agree.
“restatement of the lump of money argument”
Not really, just an attempt to provide some context and proportionality. We can also increase aid budgets, should we choose.
Maybe we should pipe you down some of our spare Japanese water.
We have plenty of water in the tropics, thanks James, and plenty of would-be engineers who think gravity flows from North to South. We had a state election on the topic, not long ago.
The warming of the Earth in the 20th Century brought with it unprecedented improvements to standards of living around the world. I hope all these IPCC government panelists (not scientific researchers) representing mostly third world nations are actually right and it stays warm for the sake of humanity.
The National Emissions Trading Taskforce is still accepting submissions on the proposed trading scheme. I sent them mine today and it was on their web site in less than 4 hours.
My submission discusses aspects of the scheme including its coverage, the level of the scheme cap, permit allocation and transitional arrangements. Possibilities for how such a scheme could be used to facilitate reductions in emissions from land use change and agriculture are also discussed. Including these sectors in the scheme in a well designed way could have climate change adaptation benefits, as well as mitigation benefits.
Thanks James, John, sorry for the delay in replying (partly accounted for by my undertaking of a little research). The Real Climate article and comments to it are well worth a read and I also appreciated William Connolley’s blog post on Lovelock’s recent catastrophism here and your own thanks James, here.
For those interested here’s a short note on Lovelock’s case for climate alarm. A speech delivered in November 2006, available here (PDF) sets out Lovelock’s reasoning quite clearly. I’d call it “argument by analogy and from various, circumstantial, evidence”, or something similar.
The case made in the speech, in brief: consideration should be given to Earth’s condition in the Eocene 55m years ago, when atmospheric levels of carbon rose and Earth was 5degrees warmer in the tropics, 8 degrees warmer at the poles. He cites a paper that attributes the temperatures of the Eocene to a belch of CO2 released into the atmosphere, an amount comparable to what we may be expected to have emitted by about 2040. Lovelock claims though that it may have taken atmospheric CO2 roughly 10,000 years to reach the Eocene levels – geologically rapid but far slower than the rate at which we are emitting CO2. Anyway since the Eocene, although the sun has warmed by maybe 0.5%, Earth has cooled and CO2 levels had, until the industrial revolution, fallen to lie within a range of 180-280ppm for at least the past 400ky (lower in ice ages, higher between). He notes that we’ve already raised CO2 by more than 100ppm to be over 385ppm today. He attributes the cooling of Earth since the Eocene, despite a warming sun, to life’s ability – the whole system of Earth’s life, the ecosphere – to regulate climate. He says that through agriculture and alterations to the planet on regional scales (my aside: the name’s Pielke:- Pielke Sr) we’ve degraded this living thermostat to the point where he believes we’ll soon – maybe only 30 years – tip over into a hotter, Eocene-like climate mode. He notes that emitted aerosols have countered the recent manmade warming from increasing greenhouse gases, so global warming would have otherwise been more pronounced already. Acidifying surface ocean waters make life difficult for calcium carbonate shell-forming creatures, so another CO2 stabilising system is being damaged. He must also have other things in mind which are not mentioned in this speech, things like carbon cycle feedbacks from warming soils and oceans, the possibility of methane clathrate release as mentioned above by James (and the likely cause of the CO2 burp of the Eocene), and other things. In the end, although he can’t make the scientific case, Lovelock’s instinct is that we’re in real trouble because Gaia is under attack on too many fronts for its now compromised negative feedback systems to stabilise climate as CO2 levels continue to climb.
If you don’t view Gaia theory as a deep insight then you probably won’t be inclined to spend much time pondering Lovelock’s latest, alarmist, ideas. He has me thinking though.
“He cites a paper that attributes the temperatures of the Eocene to a belch of CO2 released into the atmosphere, an amount comparable to what we may be expected to have emitted by about 2040”
I don’t believe that – estimates are more like 2-3000ppm CO2, which we would struggle to achieve in 2 centuries even if we (and our descendants over several generations) really set our minds to it. Here’s Wikipedia.
But even with the temperature rise, although it would undoubtedly have strong ecological consequences, that still doesn’t support his claims that it would virtually wipe out humanity. Thinking about these things is one thing – for a well-respected scientist to present them as a fait accompli is quite another.