Jim Manzi has a fairly scathing take on this global warming piece from the Washington Post:
What’s so funny is that Eilperin never seems to be willing do the work to pick up the trail of breadcrumbs that all her interviewees leave behind them. She writes that “Most scientists warn that a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) could have serious consequences.” Really – how serious? Well, according to the UN IPCC a 4C increase – twice this amount – would reduce global economic output by 1% – 5%. Oh yeah, that’s in the world of the 22nd century which is expected to have per capita consumption of something like $40,000 per year versus our current consumption of about $6,600 per year. So we are condemning future generations to be only 5.7 times richer than us, rather than 6 times richer. She quotes a scientist’s “tremendous” finding that under a business-as-usual scenario Earth will warm by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, without mentioning that this is 4C, or well within the forecast range of the current business-as-usual projections for warming by 2100 of the most recent UN IPCC report. Also note that this is the amount of warming that is projected to cost a much richer world about 3% of its consumption.
Most reporting on global warming is, to say the least, craptacular. The science journalists don't understand the economics, and so they unquestioningly accept projections from advocacy groups who want drastic action on emissions; most economics journalists don't understand the science, so they are equally hostage to bad information from a different set of advocates. Indeed, this is also true of the economists and scientists. Doing a cost-benefit analysis is very hard to do when you don't have a commensurate measure of costs and benefits.
So I understand where Manzi is coming from, but I think his position is way too strong. It's not adequate to simply project GDP forward, and compare the costs of global warming to the cost of abatement. There are serious distributional justice issues here: it is particularly reprehensible for rich countries to inflict this kind of negative externality on poor ones in order to consume more. Bjorn Lomborg's argument that we should use the savings to do poverty abatement programs has some merit, but there are multiple problems with this approach. For one, we aren't very good at poverty abatement in the third world; for another, there's currently no political movement saying "let's ignore global warming and spend $50 billion on the third world". Moreover, carbon has a very long shelf life--ca. 100 years--and there's no way to make a credible committment to have our descendants transfer money to future poor people in exchange for letting us emit carbon now.
The philosophic and economic problems of intergenerational discounting and international distributive justice are gigantic, and so far no one has a good handle on them. For all that I disagreed strongly with his method, Sir Nicholas Stern had the right idea: you need to figure out a way to fairly weigh the effects on various (cringe) stakeholders, not merely calculate the monetary costs of various potential policies.
Well, given how low Bengladesh's GDP is, the fact that significant global warming would flood the whole place and reduce its GDP to effectively zero obviously wouldn't have a major impact on total world GDP by itself. Which says absolutely nothing about the impact of such flooding on the people there, on India (which would get most of the refugees), etc.
Given that the developed countries of the world had to spend a lot of money developing the knowledge necessary for the modern world, and the countries further from the productivity frontier are getting it pretty much for free, isn't it silly to insist that it's *us* that owes them some debt?
Given that the developed countries of the world had to spend a lot of money developing the knowledge necessary for the modern world, and the countries further from the productivity frontier are getting it pretty much for free, isn't it silly to insist that it's *us* that owes them some debt?
(Rhetorical question -- of course ahistorical and apolitical rationalistic speculation of this sort is absurd).
Also, the last paragraph in the blockquote doesn't seem to be in Manzi's original piece. You should probably move them out to make it clear they're your own thoughts.
Awww, I love a zero discount rate methodology. All you have to do is change the context where you apply the methodology. For example, when somebody proposes a regulation that would slow GDP growth from, say, an average of 3% per annum to 2.999% per annum, you can point out that the costs to the generation living a thousand years from now would be equal to 66,417,581,679 times current GDP, and since the benefits of the regulation would not be 87.6 septillion dollars, the regulation is vastly overpriced and should not be enacted.
There, fixed that for you. The one exception that we in the developed could do, that would have a beneficial effect, is to drive a stake through the heart of all our ag subsidies.
heh, I don't agree with the various numbers and blah, blah either. The question is, am I assuming when not believing anyone's numbers, that the outcome MUST be better? Just because their numbers are prolly bad, dosen't mean it's going to be in your favor. Bah, it's a complex system that nobody can actually conceptualize, so screw the numbers, they're meaningless. What'd your mom tell you? "don't pee in the pool." It isn't a good soundbyte, but people understand it immediately. You start talking numbers, and everybody wants to argue veracity...
I'm sure economists must have tools for handling issues like this, but as an ignorant plebe I find calculations of the monetary cost of huge environmental catastrophes difficult to fathom. I mean, if California sinks in an earthquake, then beachfront property in Nevada becomes astronomically more valuable. So is the net cost zero? If Venice gradually disappears, then the world's tourist economy, property values etc. will gradually shift elsewhere, and the economic impact will be unnoticeable. The dollars not being spent traveling to Venice will instead be spent traveling to Florence. Still, there must be a way to express the fact that the disappearance of Venice would constitute a loss of something immensely valuable.
Having just read Eilperin's article, I'm struck by this:
She writes that “Most scientists warn that a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) could have serious consequences.” Really – how serious? Well, according to the UN IPCC a 4C increase – twice this amount – would reduce global economic output by 1% – 5%. - Manzi
This simply assumes the primacy of economics as the yardstick of measurement. Well, maybe I don't care what the economic impact is; maybe I'm a religious Jew and what I care about is that a 7-degree temperature rise would make Israel uninhabitable due to lack of water. Maybe I care that polar bears would be extinct, even though they have zero economic value. Maybe I'm a Vietnamese patriot and I care that the Mekong Delta, about 10% of my country's land mass, would be underwater.
Eilperin's article is about the science. It's not about the economics. You want to write the economics article, fine -- go write it.
Admittedly I'm biased because Eilperin grew up down the street from me and I know from personal experience how smart and hardworking she is.
That can't be right. I agree that we know almost nothing about poverty reduction. But we know a little, and I refuse to believe that the best way to help the poor is to reduce carbon emissions. Yes, there's no coalition for giving $50 billion to the poor and doing nothing about climate change, but maybe there should be.
That can't be right. I agree that we know almost nothing about poverty reduction. But we know a little, and I refuse to believe that the best way to help the poor is to reduce carbon emissions. Yes, there's no coalition for giving $50 billion to the poor and doing nothing about climate change, but maybe there should be.
" most economics journalists don't understand the science"...
"Moreover, carbon has a very long shelf life--ca. 100 years..."
Really? http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
Read through this, and all the comments (allow a couple of hours :-) ) and tell me again about what the shelf life of "carbon" (I assume you mean atmospheric CO2) is.
One thing that gets to me about projections like a 4C rise in temperature will decrease economic output by 1% to 5% is that it doesn't take into account how confident we are about those numbers. From what I understand, the feedback systems of the earth's climate are at best poorly understood right now, so it seems a little silly to pretend like we know what would happen with a 4C rise in temperature. We could see what a black swan really looks like
One thing that gets to me about projections like a 4C rise in temperature will decrease economic output by 1% to 5% is that it doesn't take into account how confident we are about those numbers. From what I understand, the feedback systems of the earth's climate are at best poorly understood right now, so it seems a little silly to pretend like we know what would happen with a 4C rise in temperature. We could see what a black swan really looks like
The basic problem with the arguments about global warming and its effects only look at about the last 100 years. If you go back thousands of years, you will see that global warming is good, global cooling is bad.
Warming and cooling have been alternating for eons. One cannot base their opinions on just the last century.
All current indications are that the current warming trend is declining and cooling is beginning.
What exactly are the costs, do they mean what 1-5% decrease in the growth rate (5%x.97?), and why do they expect it to persist over time rather than be discrete? It all seems to defy logic.
Its understandable why conservatives find global warming advocates moronic. Trying to project gross domestic product in the 23rd century is less science than science fiction. Mean time, the problems the world faces get worse because no one can agree on the science much less the policies. Oner thing that is not disputed by anyone is that the worlds supply of fresh water is dwindling due to melting ice caps. A change in posture and far less condescension might get more people on board to do something about it.
Our genuine environmental worries come down to:
1. We are burning lots of carbon to drive our economies, which at least some people who are at least superficially smarter and more honest than Al Gore actually do think could cause problems.
2. We're using up water supplies.
3. 10 billion of us will not be content to sit around and be poor, rapturous fantasies of the Gore and Erlich crowd notwithstanding.
Those are probably remediable by doing four things:
1. Build breeder nuclear reactors on a large scale.
2. Use the energy to replace coal and oil, and also to desalinate lots of water.
3. Keep encouraging peaceful economic growth, while discouraging wars of conquest. I.e., don't freaking try to reenact Smoot-Hawley or some Green equivalent.
4. When the rest of the world keeps doing its thing, and if global temperatures keep rising in a way that we care about, use geoengineering -- don't try to make the rest of the world voluntarily live poor (they won't) or hope that the earth will spontaneously cool in a single year, rather than over a century (it won't).
But none of these make the green left happy, because they'd have the undesirable consequence of actually benefiting normal human beings in the U.S., and allowing them to go on living an affluent lifestyle, which of course must not be! So we get this remedy instead:
1. Kneecap the U.S. economy by tens of trillions of dollars by actually persuading the yuppie blue-state bobos to follow the Kyoto boob bait.
2. Have Europe pretend to follow "ten Kyotos" too. They don't have to actually follow it, and neither does Canada, but they should talk about it an awful lot.
3. Ignore China, Russia, and India. Conveniently, they'll ignore you too.
4. Mumble mumble mumble the U.S. can lead by example mumble mumble.
5. Ignore the existing carbon load in the atmosphere mumble mumble mumble and that most of the human race is still just burning more carbon mumble.
6. Magic goodness ensues!
Given all this, is it a surprise to anybody that Republicans can win elections by disparaging global warming? It'd be different if environmentalists simply wanted to prevent global warming; but what they actually want to do is turn the U.S. hippie green vegan Marxist, with climate change as their crowbar for social change.
And people aren't idiots: they can see the con.