There is a new report on global warming done by the reputable economist Nicholas Stern. The Stern Review's conclusion (tip to Instapundit and TCS):
Using the results from formal economic models, the Review estimates that if we don't act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.
In contrast, the costs of action — reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change — can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year."
Bjorn Lomborg dissects the Stern Review at Opinion Journal (tip to Tim Blair):
You should read both the executive summary of the Stern Report and Lomborg's review.The report on climate change by Nicholas Stern and the U.K. government has sparked publicity and scary headlines around the world. Much attention has been devoted to Mr. Stern's core argument that the price of inaction would be extraordinary and the cost of action modest.
Unfortunately, this claim falls apart when one actually reads the 700-page tome. Despite using many good references, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is selective and its conclusion flawed. Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalized, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off. . . .
Mr. Stern sees increasing hurricane damage in the U.S. as a powerful argument for carbon controls. However, hurricane damage is increasing predominantly because there are more people with more goods to be damaged, settling in ever more risky habitats. Even if global warming does significantly increase the power of hurricanes, it is estimated that 95% to 98% of the increased damage will be due to demographics. The review acknowledges that simple initiatives like bracing and securing roof trusses and walls can cheaply reduce damage by more than 80%; yet its policy recommendations on expensive carbon reductions promise to cut the damages by 1% to 2% at best. That is a bad deal. . . .
The most well-recognized climate economist in the world is probably Yale University's William Nordhaus, whose "approach is perhaps closest in spirit to ours," according to the Stern review. Mr. Nordhaus finds that the social cost of CO2 is $2.50 per ton. Mr. Stern, however, uses a figure of $85 per ton. Picking a rate even higher than the official U.K. estimates--that have themselves been criticized for being over the top--speaks volumes. . . .
But nowhere is the imbalance clearer than in Mr. Stern's central argument about the costs and benefits of action on climate change. The review tells us that we should make significant cuts in carbon emissions to stabilize the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide at 550 ppm (parts per million). Yet such a stark recommendation is not matched by an explicit explanation of what this would mean in terms of temperature.
The U.N. Climate Panel estimates that stabilizing at 550 ppm would mean an increase in temperature of about 2.3 degrees Celsius in the year 2100. This might be several degrees below what would otherwise happen, but it might also be higher. Mr. Nordhaus estimates that the stabilization policy would reduce the rise in temperature from 2.53 degrees Celsius to just 2.42 degrees Celsius. One can understand the reluctance of the Stern review to advertise such a puny effect.
Most economists were surprised by Mr. Stern's large economic estimates of damage from global warming. Mr. Nordhaus's model, for example, anticipates 3% will be wiped off global GDP if nothing is done over the coming century, taking into account the risk for catastrophes. The Stern review purports to show that the cost is "larger than many earlier studies suggested." . . .
Faced with such alarmist suggestions, spending just 1% of GDP or $450 billion each year to cut carbon emissions seems on the surface like a sound investment. In fact, it is one of the least attractive options. Spending just a fraction of this figure--$75 billion--the U.N. estimates that we could solve all the world's major basic problems. We could give everyone clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education right now. Is that not better?
We know from economic models that dealing just with malaria could provide economic boosts to the order of 1% extra GDP growth per capita per year. Even making a very conservative estimate that solving all the major basic issues would induce just 2% extra growth, 100 years from now each individual in the developing world would be more than 700% richer. That truly trivializes Mr. Stern's 10% to 13% estimates for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
I did find one part of Lomborg's critique unrealistically sanguine. Lomborg accepts the UN's estimated cost of providing even the most "basic" health care to the world, $75 billion, which strikes me as awfully low: How could $12 a year per person per year pay for basic health care, education, and clean drinking water where it is not now provided?
Overall, I will never understand why the very real problem of global warming turns otherwise sensible people into fear-mongers.
Related Posts (on one page):
- BBC Finds Stern Report Wanting:
- "Worst of Both Worlds":
- Taylor and Van Doren on Intergenerational Equity:
- Nordhaus on the "Stern Review":
- More on the "Stern Review":
- The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.--
Of course, the latter will come out of the pockets of different people than the former. That's why we'll eventually be forced to do the former rather than the latter, regardless of whether his estimates of how much they cost are correct, and regardless of which is the better idea.
In fact, forget about global warming for a second--why aren't we spending that $75B? Heck, the U.S. spends a lot more on Iraq, and just imagine the goodwill we could generate by solving most of the world's basic problems!
Probably because that's the estimated cost assuming competent administration by local government in the most poverty stricken regions of the world. But these regions tend to be plagued by governments that are corrupt, incompetent and sometimes genocidal. Which, come to think of it, is probably one of the primary causes of the poverty to begin with.
That said, I do wonder about the potential feasability of a widespread clean drinking water project (as opposed to health care and especially education).
Look no further:
And I don't see a way out of it.
Because it gives them power and influence over their fellow citizens, often leading to money, which then leads to more power and influence ...
I am always amused by how a global warming advocate like Tim Lambert vigorously attacks global warming skeptics as paid tools of the evil capitalist polluters, while refusing to even admit the possibility that academics and climate scientists might have any pernicious motive whatsoever.
I think the reason is that anyone who tries to move the societal consensus in a direction toward a serious and responsible dealing with reality, soon discovers the enormous inertia of the body politic. One can see this in the more fundamental question of whether the climate is even changing, and whether human activities are contributing to that.
Perhaps there is a real consensus emerging now on those points - even Lomborg is compelled to state these facts in his intro to his piece. But anyone following the climate debates knows that there are still very vocal (and often quite wealthy and powerful) interests intent on denying these facts. It would be a wonderful world indeed if a calm, sober, evidence-laden, and thoroughly responsible argument about the reality of human impacts on climate would be successful in moving the societal consensus. I'm afraid though, that that is just not the way the world works.
The exaggerated argument is almost the paradigm of political discourse. We can't decide to go to war in Iraq because Saddam invades his neighbors, represses and kills his people, and destabilizes the region. He has to be a psychotic with his finger hovering over the magic button that is about to reduce our cities to ashes. We cant simply have an honest discussion about how to regulate the flow of needed manual labor into our domestic economy, we have to contemplate the vision of a grand effort to reconquer half our country for Mexico. And on and on it goes.
Perhaps we should simply take it as given that any issue will have its over-the-top advocates, and sadly, this is probably an unavoidable feature of a democracy. No doubt that over-the-top framings tend to lead to bad policy, but if we cant make mistakes, then what on earth are we to do at all? :)
Uh, nobody denies that the climate never changes, or that things haven't gotten relatively warmer over the last few years (relative to the last few years before that, anyway). That's never been under debate.
What is under debate is whether we're significantly affecting the climate, by how much, whether or not the effects of that are worth stopping, and how much is a fix (if any) worth. As usual, it appears that the climate change partisans have been caught vastly overstating their case, slanting models so that their intended result is favored at every step. Even if you think we're all going to fall into the sea, Lomborg's quite right -- Stern vastly overstated the damage and understated the costs of his proposed reforms.
Normally common sense stuff like this (along with Lomborg's astute 'if you had $X dollars, where would you put it' hypothetical) should be applauded, because it's productive no matter what you believe -- 'cheaper' is synonymous with 'palatable' -- but Lomborg's still a demon to these guys. It's really quite sad.
I think you're insights are largely correct but I also think there is much more to it.
Climate change has become a political issue and people divide up into us versus them. It's an unfortunate fact but people are very very bad at analyzing issues objectively and applauding evidence and results that strike against the position they favor. Rather we seem to have an inbuilt tribal tendency to cheer things that support our side and boo things that hurt the other side.
In other words it's the same reason that republicans watch fox news and democrats don't. We are psychologically rewarded not for seeking out conflicting viewpoints or unbiasedly discovering truth but for finding things that tell us we were right all along.
This effect is particularly bad when global warming comes up because the environmentalists have been trying to hitch a ride on the global warming bandwagon and attach all their other ideas about the environment to it. As much as I think global warming is a real effect and something to seriously concern ourselves with I utterly detest the attempt by environmental groups to insist that we can only deal with it through a rejection or diminishment of consumerism. For instance the Greenpeace distaste for the ITER (fusion reactor) is clearly based in a sense that we ought not to be finding technological fixes to our problems but curbing our excesses.
As a result we end up with a very polarized situation where people confuse their opinion on the scientific/economic matter of global warming with the deeply rooted moral disagreement between anti-consumer nature first types and the humanity first pro-consumer/progress types.
It's quite unfortunate because not only does this cause many to irrationally dismiss fears of global warming but also because by letting the anti-consumerism types identify as the global warming is real crowd we give them a free victory and lose credibility for the science, technology and progress of mankind camp.
Obviously I am making sweeping generalizations that aren't true of everyone but i think this is the subtext that is going on in the discussion.
--
As for this study it is the sort of thing that really irks me. People should stop playing up the effect of global warming on hurricanes. We just don't know enough yet. Now while I understand the difference between the high certainty we have for human caused global warming and that for hurricanes most people don't and if we find out we were wrong about hurricanes that's anther piece of ammo for the skeptics (see you didn't get hurricane's right why should we believe you about global warming).
These sorts of biased 'evidence' really piss me off because they ultimately undermine the often important causes they are supporting.
As far as the economic harm I don't think it's inconceivable that the likely result of global warming would impose less costs than prevention, at least in the short term. However, given the evidence that most past major extinctions happened as a result of runaway greenhouse effects releasing the gases trapped deep in the ocean the extreme harm this scenario would cause adds a lot of weight to the expectation even if the probability is very small (of course this wouldn't happen for at least a century at worst but it would be more expensive to deal with it then).
Now I happen to believe that Anthropogenic Global War(terrorism) really is a more immediate threat to us than Anthropogenic Global Warming. But then I'm conservative.
I've said before and I'll say again: as long as a particular advocate of the global-warming-is-apocalyptic doesn't enthusiastically support more widespread nuclear power, at least among nations that already have nuclear weapons or a robust civilian nuclear power program [that includes the US, Germany [in the latter category], and PRC -- three current and future huge coal burning countries], I will not take that advocate seriously. He is either sufficiently ill informed that he thinks increasing world nuclear power will be more apocalyptic, in which case I consider him too ill-informed to be taken seriously, or he doesn't really believe what he's saying.
-dk
"reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change — can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year." I find that statement unbelievable - at least, unless the first method used to reduce emissions is to eliminate the regulatory and NIMBY-ist barriers to building nuclear power plants and storing waste, standardize designs, and virtually mass produce the plants so the cost of nuclear power is no higher than that of electric power from coal.
Other than adopting nuclear power, changes that will make more than a token difference are going to be very costly. Better efficiency helps, but real efficiency improvements generally come about through market forces and technological advance rather than government decrees. This may come as a surprise to some leftists, but most people don't like wasting money... All the further efficiency improvements that are practical will be swamped by the increasing industrialization of China and other third world countries. Beyond that, the choices are:
- Expensive, intermittent power from solar and wind.
- Hydropower: the "renewable" energy source that wreaks more environmental havoc than any fossil fuel. It also requires massive amounts of capital to start up, has limited capacity, and has been nearly fully utilized already in most industrial countries.
- Switching to fuels that contain more hydrogen (that is, methane is better than petroleum and petroleum is better than coal). I'd like to know where those underutilized methane fields are, I could make a fortune!
- Capturing CO2 emissions from fixed locations (e.g., coal power plants) and storing the CO2 somewhere. Expensive and unproven. First, you use energy and a lot of hardware cooling stack gas and liquifying the CO2 in it, and then you've got to find a place to keep it for centuries, if not millenia. Oil companies do inject CO2 into their fields to push the oil and natural gas out, but they weren't concerned about how long the CO2 would remain trapped, and they weren't considering injecting quantities anywhere near as large as would be needed.
- Just stop doing as much.
The entire concept of manmade global warming is fear mongering. The folks in this movement simply get more shrill as people continue to ignore them.
I just cannot see a direct correlation between manmade CO2 emissions and temperature readings over the past century.
Overall, temperatures have been rising since the Little Ice Age back in the 1600s.
Over the past century, temperatures rose less than a degree from the beginning of the century to the late 30s, then temperatures dropped less than a degree between the 40s and 70s, rose again around a degree in the 80s to early 90s and then leveled off over the past decade. In comparison, industrial output and the number of vehicles increased steadily during that period of time.
Where then is the correlation between CO2 emissions and temperature? Indeed, temperatures dropped during the stunning post WWII economic boom across the world.
Much of the rise and fall of temperatures resulting in a small net increase can be reasonably be explained by the cycles of solar output and the increasing number of temperatures being taken in heat sink urban areas which artificially increase temperatures.
The rest of the increase is the perfectly natural warming which has been going on since the we started recovering from the 1600s Little Ice Age. Heck, we have not yet even returned to the warmth the Earth enjoyed back around 1000 AD when Greenland was actually green and was actively farmed by the Vikings. During that warm period, I am unaware of any economic catastrophe around the equators as is being projected by the Global Warming alarmists. Instead, this period was the height of the Islamic kingdoms across Africa and Arabia.
Remember that many of these same climate chicken littles were predicting a new Ice Age during the slightly chillier 70s when I remember Ft Lauderdale, Florida getting snow in my junior year in high school. I notice that the climate story changes every time the weather comes up with something that does not fit their last computer model speculations. However, their prescription is always the same - more government planning of the economy. I do not think that is an accident.
Of course, I've had the same question with other shibboleths of the Left. For example, abortion. It is practically a sine qua non of the Left that abortion needs to be free and more available than drinking water. Why? Why, of all things, do statists feel so adamantly and passionately that destroying embryonic human life is the one-and-only right that must remain free from even the eensyist restrictions? In the word of Willie Wonka (as played by J. Depp), "It's just weird!"
Or what about the instinctive, reflexive loathing of the military. Why would that be so closely associated (again, almost a sine qua non) with our politcal Left? Or the immediate and blanket scorn of Christian religious beliefs? How does that fall out of Leftism? Honestly, I just don't get it. Or, conversely, the infatuation with anything that has a hint of exoticism or "otherness." The most mundane, pseudo-intellectual nonsense becomes irresistable if you just dress it up with a sarong or a turban. Hell, the political Left in this country still can't quite bring itself to forthrightly condemn the homosexual killing, woman degrading Islamic extremism that we are currently struggling with in Iraq. But if Southern, white crackers advocated these policies, they would have no problem.
I know, "Off the subject, buddy." But I think my point is this-- with global warming (as with some of these other issues), supporters are responding not so much to the core idea as they are simply reacting to the opponents of these ideas. It is the old Arab saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Some people (too many?) are attracted to the global warming parade because it is opposed by "the Right," "Big Business," "Capitalists," "the Rich." Or the worst of all, "Bush!!" Since they can never make common cause with these forces of evil, global warming must be more right than not.
Likewise, abortion must be very, very right because... look who opposes it! And didn't I see Bush going to church? And celebrating the military? And blowing kisses to "America?" Therefore, these are wrong, wrong, wrong.
No doubt I will be lambasted for my superficial analysis, but I am convinced that political identities (and causes) are much more reactionary than people commonly assume. The "Left" and the "Right" are groups that coalesce around positive and negative attitudes. People develop "group loyalty" and are loathe to identify with "the wrong side" of an issue.
I think global warming is a perfect example of this. I mean, its a meteorological argument, for cripes sake! Who gets so worked up over the weather? The evidence is ambiguous, and hard conclusions are few and far between. So, how did it become such a central issue for the Left? Well... "Bush!!" opposed it. When he did that, it became radioactive for many people. I remind you that Bill Clinton also refused to do anything about global warming. The Senate voted 95-0 against Kyoto. What happened? Zip, nada. People yawned. But once "Bush!!" became Hitler, and necessarily wrong about all things, global warming took on a new urgency. And a movement was born.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
That's because money is the root of all evil... except *government* money, which is the solution to all problems.
I read Crichton's "State of Fear" novel last week while stranded at the airport and must say he hits the nail on the head. There is no evidence of man ravaging the world through carbon creation; instead, there is ample evidence that some folks desire power at any costs and global warming is the present choice for such folks. Any natural disaster is immediately attributed to global warming and a wonderful storm-free hurricane season is not mentioned at all. At the same time, researchers who toe the party-line get big fat grants and comfy tenured positions. Researchers who don't toe the party-line get sidelined -- or worse. Very much like lefty's taking over all the foundations and making sure dissidents were punished. Take, for example (of which there are many), poor Charles Murray. In welfare policy he proved 100% correct. His reward? Exile. Meanwhile, every dumb lefty party hack welfare policy maker who ignored him has comfy tenure or nice welfare-machine jobs. Is this justice? But it ain't about justice.
Global warming, ba humbug.
BUT, I think the IPCC has estimated that the proportion of temperature increase due to CO2 emissions is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20%. Thus, a bureaucracy whose very raison d'etre is largely devoted to this "cause" is maxing out at around .1 degrees Centigrade increase due to 50 years of CO2 emissions.
And yet we are supposed to just accept uncritically the speculative prediction, unsupported by past observations, that we should be expecting many degrees of temperature increase in the future due to anthropogenic activities, even though a slight fraction of a degree of change so far is attributable to CO2 emissions.
It is a complete fraud, and the NAS's and IPCC's own data show it.